At any given moment, Cooper, a 4-year-old terrier mix, is primed to run (fast) and jump (high), especially if a certain busy-tailed rodent is involved. Here he is scoping out one of his favorite parks, at the top of a hill near White Rock Lake near the boathouses. His Lake Highlands family — Jack, Julie and Mick Atkins — adopted him at the North Texas Irish Festival in 2012, promising one another that the new dog would never be allowed on the furniture. “Now he is called at bedtime to sleep with us,” Julie notes with amusement. They swear he can leap almost 5 feet when pursuing a squirrel. “He’s actually jumped to the fork of a tree to chase one,” Julie adds.
