Up in the sky

Over the last few days, when I've been working up at the spring on the slopes above Gamone, my dog Sophia (who usually has the habit of accompanying me everywhere) has preferred to remain at the house. That's because she's wary of getting chased or kicked by the cantankerous donkeys. And, at the end of my work, Sophia is waiting for me down at the house.

I have the impression that she's intrigued to catch sight of me at the top of the embankment, almost up in the sky. Here at Gamone, there's an amazing assortment of levels of all kinds, including even five or six distinct levels inside the house. I often wonder whether Sophia's mind is capable of modeling the environment geometrically, enabling her to deduce the path between two points. I don't think so. I have the impression that she locates me, in these multi-level contexts, by a trial-and-error approach based upon the intensity and direction of my smell. On the other hand, nothing proves that Sophia's not an absolute wizard at geometric model-making. Maybe she's continually saying to herself: "What a terrible pity that poor William has to rely solely upon geometric modeling, without ever being able to use smell to find me."