I’m dogsitting again. For those who don’t know, I love animals but have commitment issues, so I don’t own one. That, and I travel a lot for work, so it’s not exactly practical.
This is the Wonder Dog (aka “Shadow”) who is my friend while her parents are vacationing:
Yes, she’s as awesome as she looks. Except she’s getting up there in years, so her walks have diminished significantly since I first met her 5+ years ago. She used to easily handle an hour power walk, but now we’re lucky if she goes 20 minutes at a decent clip.
She’s been especially pokey and lethargic this week, so I was considering it an accomplishment if we could circle my (very small) block. Then Alan showed up.
Shadow’s a very sweet dog, but she doesn’t like men. At all. It probably has something to do with her pre-rescue history. As a result, when Alan arrived after work yesterday, she wanted nothing to do with him. And I mean NOTHING.
She would point her nose to the ceiling just so she wouldn’t have to see him. She would stare at me meaningfully, as if we were co-conspirators, her eyes flicking to Alan as if to say, “What’s HE doing here?”
Since it was walk time, I got her leashed up and the three of us ventured out. In the elevator she turned her back to Alan, even though that meant she rode down with her nose in the corner. I’m pretty sure she was trying to pretend he wasn’t sharing the 5’x5′ box with us.
And as soon as we hit the pavement, she HUSTLED.
I’m convinced she was trying to get away from Alan, because she kept looking over her shoulder to see if he was still there. Sometimes, if he started to creep up ahead of us, she would suddenly hit the brakes and look at me like, “WAIT! We might actually ditch him! Let him GO!”
I was glad to have Alan along, especially since it meant she was finally getting a bit of exercise. (For those of you thinking we were pushing her too hard, we weren’t. Whenever we stopped, Shadow wasn’t panting or out of breath, and she didn’t look uncomfortable at all.) Anyway, we somehow managed to get in a steady 30 minute walk at a relatively good pace.
It was only as we were wrapping up the walk that she finally decided to “do her business,” which totally gave me a case of the giggles. What I found funny was that – with 30 minutes of perfectly fine urban terrain to choose from – she waited until we hit this patch to drop a bomb:
Still not sure why I’m laughing? Look more closely: That’s a turd-colored, dog-shaped “No pooping!” sign behind her. And she practically took a dump on it.
She’s too well behaved for me to believe she was deliberately breaking the rules to express her displeasure with Alan. Instead, I’d just like to think she has naturally comedic timing. Or perhaps she was just taking the piss out of him, if you will.
pithypants 
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