Dear Goddamned Dog,
Of your many quirks, stopping suddenly in front of me to eliminate as we’re walking is the one most likely to cause my demise while in public. Unlike on TV, where the dog politely signals its need for a restroom, moves to a nearby, appropriate green spot, circles, excuses itself and invisibly takes care of business, you stop dead as few inches in front of me as possible, squat, and then look at me for the treat you know is coming because, hey, you didn’t do it in the house!
I used to listen to audiobooks when I walked, beagle. Now it’s far too dangerous to be absorbed in anything other than where you are in relation to my feet.
Early this morning we were walking along the main street near our home. We’d just made it past the Dunkin’ Donuts litter, construction debris, cigarette butts, spit, empty mini-liquor bottles, food wrappers and, curiously, three abandoned shoes that were evidence of another Friday night in a college town. I fed you treats and congratulated you for making it past all that without consuming any of it. To celebrate you tried to kill me by stopping suddenly in front of me to pee.
“That’s disgusting,” said a man passing by. He was probably in his late thirties, and what my friend John would deem “no prize,” perhaps walking back from that Friday night spent somewhere other than home.
“What are the odds,” I said to you, “That he’s peed on a tree in his life?”
He slowed and turned toward me before walking away. “That’s completely different!”
I looked at the nearest tree. The breeze sent its head back slightly, and its early spring leaves could only be described as “rolled.”
“Sorry,” I shouted after him, “She’s a puppy, and she’s only on page 7,692 of the Manual of Human Global Ownership. Also, I don’t think the tree agrees with you.”
Anyway, beagle, you really need to get to chapter 234 of the MHGO, Sidewalk Delineation: City vs Privately Owned Trees, Stupid Mini-Fences, Hard Scape, and Assessing Curb, Driveway, and Public (Human) Pathways. After all, you’re just a guest on this planet. You need to learn how to behave while we decimate it.
You don’t see us stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to do our business. OK, sometimes we throw up everywhere, but that’s just because we know how to have fun. We are tidy, and have thumbs and big, wrinkly brains. We use plumbing, and send our waste “somewhere else” where it magically disappears.
Unlike you, we value nature, so we create large parks and areas where animals are not allowed to go, because animals are unnatural. You might dig, or run, or chase, or in some way exhibit behaviors that are far too wild for nature. Don’t try and deny it—we hear you barking sometimes.
While you have dirty dens, we have houses and apartments that are clean, and are heated and cooled by using the wasteful litter the dinosaurs left behind. Houses and apartment buildings require yards and parks where we grow nice, controlled grass and flowers, not the messy, uncultured stuff your kind tolerates.
Housing is becoming a problem for us, though. The sensible solution will be to build up, meaning scaffolding entire, second-level cities above the first one, say a few hundred feet higher.
We’re going to have to do something about the birds, though. They can’t just be allowed to fly everywhere, pooping and taking up all that sky. Plus, they’ll probably want to roost on our windowsills and roofs, and nobody needs that kind of nuisance.
The MHGO is going to need a few more chapters when that happens.
In the meantime, Beagle, if you could learn to move to the side a little it would serve two purposes: it would annoy people less, and it would give me fair warning.
I might live to walk you another day.
Love,
Your Person
This made my day! Fabulous, Marjie!!! Alice: try not to kill your person the next time she walks you on a concrete sidewalk.....not cool.
This sparked up an already great day. Great fun to read. I love the part about the guy who looks like he spent the night in a place other than his home and your comments to him. Good for you! I wouldn't want to get you your way :)