Last week we lost two of our dogs, one right after the other, but on different nights. The first one came back before the second one disappeared, but we still had two nights out in the cold, calling and whistling for our beloved to return.

The first to go was the hound dog, Schley (named after a nearby road). She'd been spayed a week before, so we worried about health concerns that might have caused her to take off. I'd just flown in from out of town and was dismayed that she wasn't here waiting for me. Peter and I bundled up and took flashlights to search the sheds and the woods around our farm. Finally Peter gave up, but I kept calling.

Soon enough I heard her familiar bay somewhere off in the distance, but found only silence when I got there. Three times I repeated the scenario until I was able to zero in on her location. When I found her she was barking up into the branches of a tree. My light illuminated the dark eyes and white coat of an opossum.

Our old dog, Fleck, never goes anywhere. But he was gone last week, and we immediately feared the worse. Fleck is an aged speckled mutt who can turn into a puppy at the sight of a ball or Frisbee, or when Peter says the word, "swim." This night we beamed our lights beneath all of the pole buildings on the farm, and searched corners where he liked to sleep. No Fleck. I was about to head inside in defeat when I remembered that he loved to sleep under the horse trailer.

As I walked in that direction I remembered that I'd found the trailer door open earlier in the day and closed it. When I opened it this night Fleck hopped out, rather sheepishly. He'd heard us calling and waited patiently -- silently -- for one of us to figure it out.

We have three dogs, and so far Buddy the Border Collie hasn't gone missing. Buddy is a bundle of instinct, all organized around gathering things and moving them around. We used to have sheep for Buddy to re-arrange. In his old age he's given up trying to herd the horses. These days his work lies with the UPS truck, when it comes. He circles it repeatedly, maniacally, biting the left front bumper on every pass.

Schley is a hound whose nose is her window on the world. Her instinct says "tree it." Fleck, with his retrieving instinct, is all eyes when Peter throws a ball or a Frisbee. His instinct says "fetch."

These three dogs have such different impulses and abilities that you'd think they were from entirely different species. Horses, like dogs, have breed specific characteristics that run pretty true. I began to wonder about characteristics that run in human families, like athletic or creative talents. We all know families of mechanics or doctors or writers.

Our human gene pool is much more mixed than animals with pedigrees, and yet we do sometimes see talents and tendencies passed from one generation to the next. Watching our dogs, I find myself wondering whether human talents and instincts came from different parts of the world.

Peter's family has a fair amount of musical and theatrical talent that made its way down into our children. My father's family has a certain mechanical genius and "figure things out" ability, a portion of which seems to have come my way. Our daughter is now a photographer, as my father was. Is there something about me that is particularly Swedish, inherited from my mother? Does the mechanical ability go back to my father's land of Wales where our family played a particular role?

I am grateful for the talents we've inherited, and glad that no horribly negative traits seem to have tagged along with those gifts. Today I am especially glad that I don't feel an urge to chase possums, or to bite the bumper of the UPS truck when it rolls up the driveway.

Susan Gladin is a freelance writer, United Methodist minister, and executive director of the Johnson Intern Program in Chapel Hill. She tends horses and a home business on the farm she shares with her husband. Their two grown daughters live nearby. You may e-mail her at sglad1210@aol.com.