Will exchange large, ill-mannered blonde golden retriever for old, slow, lap cat.
I decided to strike out and take Augie Dog for a walk. He was so excited when he saw me pick up his orange lead that he started twirling and whirling in circles. Daughter1, who is staying with us, decided to join us. She was in for a treat.
Half way down the hill towards our front fence, Augie must have picked up the scent of something really enticing, perhaps a wallaby, or a possum and all forty kilos of dog raced away with Flamingo Dancer in tow.
Well, I kept up for a metre or so, before the slope of the hill and poor foot work brought me down. I hit the ground and rolled.
No hand on his leash, Augie turned back and thinking I was in for a game, jumped on top of me. Daughter1, who had the manners and good sense not to laugh at her mother floored by a dog, grabbed his leash and pulled Augie into control.
“Are you okay,” she asked.
“No.”
We continued on down the road where we were met by a dog that escaped from a nearby yard. It looked as though it was part pig dog, which too many dogs are in the country, and next thing, my stupid genes came into play and I placed myself between the two dogs. Yes, I know, stupid, stupid, stupid. Luckily, the interloper was more inquisitive than aggressive and its owner soon puffed up the hill and retrieved it.
By then both daughter and I had enough of the dog walking and turned for home. Another neighbour, a wild life warrior from down the road whom we had never met before, pulls up in his truck and as greeting calls, “Is that the dog that ran through my yard yesterday?”
“No, we have a fence. He is never out of his yard.”
“Well, it looks like the dog.”
“The breeder lives locally, there are golden retrievers everywhere,” I snapped and walked on. What an objectionable man.
Back home, I told Augie I was trading him in for a lap cat. He appeared not to care.
Daughter added insult to injury by commenting that “every time I walk out with you, you fall over.” She was referring to the start of the year when I tripped while carrying Petite Fille in the garden.
“Common denominator is?” I replied, applying disinfectant to my knee graze. “I refuse to walk with you for it is obviously your fault.” She appeared not to care.
Minerva sent a text a little later to say that she had been forced to put one of her dogs down over the weekend. I said she could have Augie Dog. She was not amused.
“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring–it was peace.”
― Milan Kundera
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