I always carry my hunting knife. I keep it real sharp. On my seventh birthday, my daddy taught me how to skin a squirrel. He gave me my own knife in a leather sheath when I turned 12. He had burned my initials, "L.A.," right there in the leather.

Tony teased me without mercy about that knife.

“Hey, girl, you can’t handle a knife that big! That’s a boy’s knife,” he’d say.

“So what if I’m a girl,” I’d answer my brother.

Then he just repeated my dad’s saying: “Never have a dog that’s too much for the master.”