Monday, March 20, 2006

A Steaming Pile

There was ice coating the grass this morning when I took the dog to the park. It crunched beneath our feet on this first day of Spring. Neo took awkward high steps for a few minutes, until his feet got used to the sensation. He did his usual tree to tree, sniff and pee thing around to the other side of the park. Then he did his usual squat and poop thing, while I looked delicately away, pretending to admire the mountain view.

Straightening up from his steaming pile, he bounded away with a lolloping romp, a definitive change from his previous desultory trot. Clearly he had divested himself of all burdens and was thoroughly happy. Life was absolutely, wildly wonderful. He cavorted around me as if to say, "Wow! It's morning! Yahoo! We're at the park! I feel great!"

As I picked up said pile to transport it dutifully to the trash can, I thought, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could all do this?" I don't mean
this. I mean, wouldn't it be nice if dumping our burdens were as easy for us as it is for Neo? If we could just let go of all the crap (sic) that we carry around with us, and leave it in a steaming pile on the frosty ground? Then we too could run and leap with happy abandon, free to run the whole breadth and width of the field.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I want to scream laughing inside when you write looking delicately to the mountain view. Dr. Peg, do you think that dogs care?
I also think that as pet owners it's important, since we're the only ones to care about their systems, to actually notice what they do. Say if I gave my dog a lamb shank bone the previous night after my supper, maybe I wouldn't want to look delicately away. I would probably be checking out to be sure they didn't bleed the bloody Red Sea the next morning. Maybe I should have been a GI vet. I don't even know if there is such a thing. But the way the population is getting so into their pets it might not be such a bad enterprise.
Chow!
FL

Anonymous said...

My secret desire is to be able to act like a three year old in any public place where I feel frustrated or thwarted by life. Standing too long in line at the motor vehicle place? Drop to the floor, kick your feet, and scream. Don't have enough money to take home the leather jacket you spotted at the mall? Wail loudly as fat tears stream down your face. Lose your internet connection at a critical moment? Toss the damn computer out the window and run outside to stomp on it. Being a grownup is just a steaming pile of poop a lot of days.

Heather said...

It would be so nice to be able to just dump it all and dance away knowing someone else was going to clean it all up for me.

Now where can I find someone who will apply for that job?

Anonymous said...

FL - You're funny. And right, no doubt. I remember when he was a puppy - in those days we not only watched, we cheered when he pooped outdoors!

Virginia - I hear you, girl! Sometimes I envy those toddlers with "no social graces".


Heather - good point. We should all have a cleaner upper. What a great dream!

Anonymous said...

I was typing away last evening commenting on this posting, when I my husband asked, "who's that you're writing to?" I replied that I found an interesting woman doctor that lives and works in Albuquerque who writes about real life things she experiences in work and day to day living, ie, tonight, about walking her dog who is doing his business on a cold morning. He replied, "there's two kinds of people in the world. People who have time and will talk about that kind of topic and people who don't even have enough time in the day to use the bathroom themselves", implying himself.
I explained that this blogger was very entertaining and it's as if she has touched upon a taboo topic but nevertheless is very descriptive and eloquent. He said how do you even know she's really a doctor and even a woman? How do you know it's not a crazy sex offender lunatic purporting to be a woman doctor. I replied, "I guess it's a question of trust, and enjoying my leisure time." Anyway, I have two dogs and I am the one to walk them most everyday two or three times a day, so I think about things like this as well, but you beat me to the descriptive narration.
FL

Anonymous said...

Dear anafaran's husband,

You are so right. I am so busted! I'm not a doctor. I'm not even a woman. I'm an asexual sick freak feco-phile who's looking in your bathroom window RIGHT NOW !!!

BWAAhahahaha!

(lucky for you that you never have time to go to the bathroom!)


***************************

Sorry, anafaran, I just couldn't resist entertaining myself there. Hee hee hee!

Kim said...

You're a good dog owner. I would have kicked snow over it....while delicately looking at the mountain view.

Just kidding, of course. I have two 90 pound mutts. So I get a lot of delicate mountain viewing on our walks. But we always clean up after ourselves.

One of the dogs gets so excited he runs twenty feet and then runs back to me and jumps around like, "Whhooopee!" He's the mellow dog.

The hyper dog takes her walk seriously, puts her nose to the ground and walks in a straight line.

Go figure.

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