When I was 13, our next door neighbour got a dog. In itself, that’s not a rare occurrence. However, this dog acquisition caused quite a stir. She was an elderly 
widow and lived alone. The dog was a young Boxer. His name was Copper. I don’t know if she named him that or if he came named. I can’t remember where he came from, if she sought him out or if he just happened along. I thought it was wonderful that Mrs. Layfield had a dog, but even I was a bit surprised, especially the dog being a big energetic Boxer.
My parents, and probably everybody else in town, were amazed, maybe even horrified. The Layfields had never had a dog in our memory. And Mrs. Layfield was a tiny old lady. My mother feared the dog would knock her down the stairs, knock her over in the hallway, knock her down outside.
You’d go to her house, ring the doorbell and hear Copper come tearing down the hallway at full speed to the door. Mrs. Layfield would come along behind, open the door and welcome you into the front parlour.
She was a lady of the Victorian era. Her house was lovely, with beautifully polished old furniture, lace antimacassars on the chair arms and backs. Delicate porcelain figurines and glass ornaments displayed on table tops. And in the middle of it, a huge slobbering Boxer galumphing around.
But Copper, to my knowledge, never knocked a single table over. He seemed able to jump and play in the middle of a room full of lovely fragile bric a brac without touching a thing. In deference to her upholstered furniture and his drooling, she put old towels on chair arms and parts of the sofa where he was likely to be. She kept towels on the floor in the kitchen by his bowls and in the hallway to mop up the water that dribbled out of his mouth after he drank. But other than that, Mrs. Layfield made no adjustments to her living arrangements to accommodate his boisterousness, and she didn’t need to. He seemed to know where it was ok to be boisterous and how to play around the furniture.
Her backyard was already fenced, and we’d see Copper out playing with stuffed toys and balls in his yard. When he matured into a sensible dog, she’d take him for 
walks down Main Street. He would sedately walk beside her, never pulling her or getting tangled in her feet.
The two of them aged together. Copper’s hips got bad and she made him a bed on the main floor because he couldn’t climb the stairs anymore. Not too long later, she did the same for herself. She and Copper lived together until he died of old age. She didn’t get another dog. A few years later, she sold her house and moved to a nursing home. A new young family moved in, with a young black Lab. It was nice having a dog next door again. But we always called it “Copper’s yard”. Many owners later, we also still call the house “Mrs. Layfield’s house”.
