Taking a dog for a walk was once a thing I considered to be most tedious, mostly owing to the fact that it was.
Dog’s have selective attention, something that manifests every time they fixate on something you’d prefer they’d ignore and ignore something you’d prefer they fixate upon.
My dog’s deaf, which adds an additional layer of frustration to the process, but yet still hasn’t stopped me from hurling obscenities at the little beast for yanking on the leash every two seconds to sniff/investigate/water every blade of grass along our path. The poor dog can’t hear me, but passersby certainly can, something that can be embarrassing. My neighbour had a daughter that shared the same name as my dog, Dolly. I’d let the dog out to do some business, but of course it would wander away from me in a direction of least convenience. As if it would help somehow, I’d bellow out “Dolly!! Dolly!!!!!” As if that would make any difference. But to the neighbours, who were new at the time, it must have represented a bit of a quirk in their new neighbour’s personna, a very unattractive one. Coupled with the inevitable profanity that attends owner frustration, such displays must have had the new residents wondering if I was suffering from Tourettes.
Another by-product of Dolly’s lack of hearing is my reliance on hand and arm gestures as a means of communication. I’ll admit, it’s been a process, with some degree of success. But for any of that to work, you first have to get her attention, which involves throwing things like sticks, small branch pieces, discarded hamburger wrappers, tiny pebbles and a lot of major gesturing using big arm movements to capture her attention. To people passing by on the other side of the street, or to motorists on the roadways, it looks sort of like a case for a potential mental health intervention.
I once walked on my own, without Dolly or any other dog, and the pace was much quicker, my long legs eating up distances effortlessly and in impressive time. But those days are long gone.
I have nothing worthy of the word “pace” to talk about, because pace implies forward motion, and that’s a luxury that I have to work very hard to coax out of my dog. I can’t guess as to what “speed” we may attain, a fact made more difficult by the absence of anything even remotely connected to the relationship between time and distance. We’re putting in the time. We’re just not putting in the distance. So speed isn’t something we can comment on.
Do dogs have an infinite reservoir or urine upon which they can draw upon to mark their spot over the urine of another dog? How many leg-lifts can they pull off in an hour and have stuff come out? Do they have some sort of built-in calibration that allows them to discharge the “perfect” amount of urine to one-up the previous dog who attended that location? It’s bizarre.
Same thing with the other stuff. How many times can they pop a squat, and actually have a productive result worthy of one of the thirty doggy bags you have to bring along? And why can’t Dolly understand something as simple as not taking a dump on the main drag sidewalk. I mean, dude, it’s downtown, and I feel that everyone is watching to see how diligently I make the effort to clean it up, which I do, but leave myself open to the criticism of others watching from the window of the local downtown coffee shop.
A mail carrier told me of this movie he saw where Aliens looked down on earth and thought the dogs were in charge, since the people with them were constantly bending down and picking up their shit. Made me think.
I have to say, you meet all kinds of people along the way, young and old, big and small, male and female, short and tall. (Felt a bit like Dr. Seuss there). And every one of them, or most of them, respond to the dog. Never mind you, the slug holding the other end of the leash. You’re just a necessary afterthought, since somebody’s gotta hold the leash for this magnificent dog, which is in no way remotely magnificent, although, in a pinch, she’s cute.
I recently purchased a pair of shoes that can be generously described as being shock yellow in colour. So now I get noticed for the dog and the shoes, but little else. Not that there’s tons about me worthy of notice in the first place, but when people walk past and say “ I love your dog and I love your shoes,” it’s easy to feel a little left out.
Several woman walking towards us smile when they see Dolly and say something like, “Aww, so cute!” My hapless response is often “I know! And the dog too, right?!”
I suppose I’ll just have to accept that any notoriety I may have from walking the dog arrives solely as a result of the dog and, perhaps, my shoes.
In all honesty, the people I’ve met have been more than friendly, but of course, there are others who prefer to keep to themselves. You learn who is who pretty quickly, and dish out the “good morning” greeting accordingly. They were once for everyone encountered, but that’s been modified to exclude the people walking around with a perpetual scowl on their faces. For this latter type, I wish I could just say to Dolly “piss on them,” but she’s deaf, so not a good listener.
And it’s funny, but all you have to do is go out for a walk an hour earlier or an hour later and it’s an entirely different landscape of people and pets. It’s funny how, over a bit of time, you actually make what I would call walking friends, people you pass and greet on a daily basis, maybe even stop for a brief chat with, sometimes not knowing their names or they knowing yours. And there’s almost this silent protocol where you’re allowed to say hello while out for a walk but return to stranger status when you come across the same person at Walmart.
Take Betty. I met her and her buddy Janet while out walking. Our paces were similar, meaning I had to entertain options of speeding up or slowing down to avoid the awkwardness of walking at the same pace along the same stretch of sidewalk. As things turned out, Betty and Janet both engaged in easy, comfortable conversation with me, so much so that we walked the better part of a mile together before they peeled off to get to where their cars were parked. A couple of days later I saw Betty at Metro. “Hi Betty,” I ventured, with the casual ease of someone made familiar by sharing some time and space with her just days before. It was then and there where I learned that I’m not on the list of people who can say hello to Betty at Metro. I guess it’s called knowing one’s place, and I learned it right there in the deli line.
Anyways, the daily doggy walk, or Dolly walk, has become an integral part of my day. Over time I’ve learned to adapt, and there are no longer outbursts of profanity or wild gesticulations, accept for those needed to communicate with certain drivers who have passed their recent asshole test with flying colours.
So long as I leave Betty to herself at the grocery store, it’s become, for the most part, a positive experience and a super way to spend ninety minutes every day.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 