Sorry, I couldn't resist that title. "Dog Day Afternoon" is a good movie and the title fit, sort of. (I have been watching old Al Pacino movies lately, pre "Godfather," which is one of my all-time favorite movies. "Serpico" is on Netflix and holds up well, by the way).
And my dog time is not the afternoon, as you well know, it's 7:00 a.m. so the afternoon reference is also bogus.
But the non-bogus part of this is that it was a bad morning for me and the dogs. Every other Wednesday that I have been at the SPCA walking the dogs has been either good or very good. Sometimes I walk 4 dogs but usually it's 6 or 7, depending on the dogs, the time and the other volunteers. Today I walked 2 dogs. That's it. Just 2 dogs and both of them were dogs I have walked previously.
Clover is a smallish female mix, maybe 40 pounds and she has been in prison at SPCA Sonoma for a couple of months and I can't believe she hasn't been adopted. She's calm when walking, knows how to fetch a ball, is personable and loving. I walked her today and gave her lots of pets and treats. She loves hot dog bites.
And this is Harry.
Harry is huge! Like 100 pounds huge. But beautiful and calm and I am sort of in love with him. Almost all the dogs at the SPCA wear a harness to walk which means we put those harnesses on the dogs when we take them from their cells. Some are so difficult to harness (see below) and some are easy. (Some fall in between terrible and easy.) Harry, even with his size, is easy. He knows that going out means peeing and pooping (which he won't do in his cell) and a romp around and Harry loves to smell stuff. He also likes treats, dog treats, hot dog bites, anything. I love this dog. Even as big as he is, he is gentle most of the time and once our jaunt is over and I return him to his cell, he is happy to get more treats. But then, when I close the door and look at him, he has the sincerely sad face that only a lovely dog can have. He breaks my heart every time.
So, Clover and Harry. My pals. So far, great.
But then I ventured into unknown territory. Usually there is a regular employee there who also walks dogs early in the morning and stands with me at the white board and gives me guidance on who I should leash up. This man knows my hesitancy with really large, jumpy dogs. However, he was not there today so I relied on the notes all dog walkers are required to leave on the computer. Keep in mind that these are dogs that were not there last week. The notes said things like "easy to leash" and "jumpy but easy" and "once harnessed he was an angel" and so forth. I picked three of these unknown dogs and got into their cells and I could not harness one of them. The smallest was an 8 month old puppy, maybe 30 pounds, but his cell was full of poop and pee (which I usually tolerate just fine) and he jumped and nipped at me and spun around and around and barked for about 3 minutes, at which time I called it quits. The same thing happened with two other dogs but they were larger, 50-60 pounds, not housetrained so lots of pee and poop on their paws (which, again, is fine if they are willing to be coerced into the harness) and way too jumpy and pushy for me.
In defeat, I signed out and left the shelter. I felt like I had failed the dogs. Not just the dogs, but that I had failed myself. Of course, as we humans do, I conveniently extrapolated that experience into this: What a failure I am. What a joke my life is. I can't even harness a dog. What is the point of anything?
Humans are so good at that, aren't we? Taking one thing that happens and making it the entire point of our existence?
It took me a while to get past that mind-set. It brings up the entire point of being retired, of course. What's the point? I don't want to play any sort of card here, but the cards are on the table for a reason. But that's a blog for another day.
Thanks for reading. I wish I could say something like "strange things are afoot at the Circle K" but I am sure those cards are not in the mix.
To be clear, I did not walk the bunny or the cat, nor did I attempt to walk either of them. Perhaps that would have turned my day around. Perhaps not. Just saying....
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