Adventures of Willow

Yesterday morning on our walk Willow took a dump in a unkempt yard. The yard looked weedy with a few wildly grown bushes. It is a corner lot. From where we were I noticed no one but one of the four or five surrounding houses could see us and that was the house of the yard with the fresh dump. And their 2 windows overlooking that part of their yard had its shades closed. We could have probably got away with no one seeing it. But, the little goody-two-shoes sitting on my left shoulder said, “Do you really want to leave your dog’s mess for someone else to clean it up?”

The little guy on my right shoulder retorted, “They don’t care, they won’t clean it up, look at the yard- leave it!”

The little guy on my left shoulder said, “It is not up to you to decide for the people what should go on their property – remember the Golden Rule.”

And I picked up the doo-doo with my plastic bags.

I also stirred a memory of a couple of years ago when a preacher and his family lived next door to Bob. They lived there about three or four years and had all they could take and moved. They had a little fruity looking white poodle. They would always take their dog next door to Bob’s yard to use the bathroom. I think they felt one more dog turd among the litter wouldn’t matter. And of course, they didn’t clean it up… why bother>
I don’t think the preacher thought of the Golden Rule nor did he have a little man sitting on his shoulder.

The turd-in-the-yard also reminded me of when I was about 5 years old and it was summer time. No one wore shoes in the summer. One morning I ran out and played sand stepped on a mushy turd… it got all between my toes. I was mad. I knew who did it. My next door play-mate Carol Joe.

I went directly to their apartment, went in (no one locked their doors then), marched back to bedroom, woke him up, made him come out side with me and I should him the mushy smeared turd and told him never to dookey in my yard again. He didn’t. Carol Joe was about a year younger than I.

Carol Joe was mentioned indirectly in my last posting. He is the one who had a wreck at Sope’s Creek Covered Bridge destroying the bridge and himself on Valentine night 1964.

On our walk this morning Willow studied every mailbox with border grass clumped around it. I never knew their were so many mailbox posts that were surrounded by border grass, or monkey grass, as it is sometimes called.

I always thought that was probably where male dogs peed and she was in a way just studying her peers. Then this morning, all that poking my the long border grass at the foot of mail box posts paid off. Out shot a rabbit… I heard a “THUMP!” That was the sound of a rabbit’s hind feet springing and away the rabbit shot.

Willow tried as hard as she could to break away from the leash to hunt down her prey. I think with her breed that might be part of the instinct – or she read it in her hunting dog manual – to always poke around in high clumps of grass.

On the way back home I tried telling her how the hunt is the thrill, actually catching and eating a rabbit would anti-climatic – but I don’t she bought it.