I really like dogs. I love my dog. She's a great little motivator, she makes me smile, she goes pretty much everywhere. She loves pretty much everything.
I love other people's dogs as well. My dog makes friends easily, and so she has a bunch of 'friends' that she 'visits.' Okay, it's more like she comes with us everywhere to visit friends and family, and most of them have dogs. But still! She's got a little canine social life. For example, Ollie* lives down the street, and Jill* likes to go down there, get let into his yard, play for an hour, and then come home. Ollie's owner loves this - Ollie needs the socialization. Jill's favorite friend-dog is Jack*. Jack and Jill. Seriously. They were meant to be together, apparently. I became friends with Jack's owner, and then her boyfriend became friends with mine,and now we're several years down the road and married, and Jack and Jill spend lots of time together. In fact, Jack is okay with most other dogs, but he only really plays and runs around with Jill. Dawwww!
Well anyway, our friends were out of town and we had Jack over to stay with us for 10 days. Jill is a medium dog, Jack is large. Jack is also a little head strong. Sometimes, you give him a command, and he tilts his head, as if to say, "I'm thinking about it. But I can't decided if I should really have to listen to you. I'll get back to you on that." On the leash, if he sees a squirrel, he gets low to the ground and pulls hard enough to pull a sled full of people all on his own. It was really fun to walk both of them at once. Really. Fun.
One nice weekend day, we met some other dogs at the dog park, played until dark, and then I took Jack and Jill up to Jack's house to check on our friends' cat. They live in the woods. Upon getting out of the car in the dark, I thought I had a good grip on Jack. I was wrong. I saw some animal run out of the back yard and down the hill into the dark, and I could not stop Jack from wrenching his harness right out of my freezing cold hand. One word to Jill, "Stop!" and she was frozen in place. Good dog. Many words, most of them cuss, were screamed after Jack as he disappeared into the dark. No luck. He was gone.
I frantically ran into the house, locked Jill inside, grabbed a flashlight, and tore into the woods in the general direction of Jack's last known position. I was yelling his name into the dark, running up the hill, then down it, up to the street, down the street, back into the woods. After awhile I noticed my voice bouncing back to me from the opposite hill. I could hear that I sounded pretty frantic. I tried to rationalize: "They told you he pulls this stuff. He'll come back. Probably. Although you may have to spend the night out here. And oh yeah their cell number is on his tag, so if someone finds him first and calls, they will know you lost him..."
Then I remembered. The whole drive up the mountain, I had had to pee. Badly. It was a, "Quick! Think of something else! The desert! Dry mouth! Almost last call at the bar and the bathroom line is really long, I'm sure you can hold it!" kind of pee. As I tromped through a meadow of week-old snow, the top layer sometimes supporting me and sometimes giving way to the 6 inches of slush underneath, I thought about this for a fleeting moment, and then pressed it to the back of my mind.
On my third pass by the house, I ran in and grabbed Jill and her leash. I thought maybe she could help me. She always wants to help, and she had that wrinkled brow she gets when she knows I'm upset. She picked up his tracks in the driveway, but that was it. She had just about as much of an idea as I did. Well, we ran around in the woods in the dark some more, and around 20 minutes after all this madness began, I came around the house again and shined the light on the back deck. Behold! Creepy animal eyes in the dark! Luckily, when I got up there, it was Jack, and not a lion.
So I grabbed him, a little roughly, and shoved him and Jill into the house, and my brain says, "Hey. It's me. That thing you've been ignoring? About that... DIRE EMERGENCY! DROP PANTS! PREPARE FOR PEEING RIGHT NOW!" I was glad no one was around as I tried to rip off my pants without undoing the belt, tripped towards the bathroom and...
Well, I made it. I came back out to the living room, and Jack and Jill were lying there, all, "What's wrong? And when's dinner anyway?"
I got home, told my husband the story, and then proudly proclaimed, "But I DIDN'T pee my pants! I made it!" I've never felt so much like a grown-up in my life.
*All names changed, whether human or dog-kind. The Jack and Jill? Their real names also match a famous mythical couple.
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