Thursday, April 5, 2012

Big Dumb Bella


THIS IS THE first but certainly not last time on this new blog we will talk about our dogs, the loves of our lives.

After a day of chronicling human misery, I like to take Bella, our 3-year-old mutt, and Lucy, our beautiful 12-year-old Border/Aussie Shepherd mix, to a local cemetery so they can run. I can get my head back together and the girls have the place to themselves, chasing squirrels and ghosts with gleeful abandon.

Bella was described by my sister Charys as "a little dumb, but very sweet." Actually, Bella is very dumb. This was proven today when she ran through our fence.

I went out through the fence door and closed it before letting the girls out. I had to stretch out the sheet in the back seat of my car before letting them in it. But as soon as I closed the fence door, Bella came charging up and SPLAT went right through it.

I yelled. She shook her head and said, "What?"

No biggie. I fixed the latch, then off we went.

The girls go off leash and behave 99 percent of the time. Today, however, was a 1 percent day. A guy who looked like Fish from the band Marillion was walking two little dogs on a leash by the front of the cemetery as we got done, and Bella of course startled all three of them by charging up from behind.

"Old man! Old man!" the guy shouted. One of the dogs snarled at Bella, who just wanted to say hello, but of course Bella snarled back, so pretty soon we had Fish from Marillion foaming at the mouth and three dogs snarling at each other. Of course Lucy, the best-behaved dog ever, had to wander up and add dog butt-sniffing to the fray.

GUH.

I apologized, got the girls out of there, got Bella in the car, and thought all was well. Except Lucy turned back to sniff more dog butts. "Old man!" Fish said again.

I had to grab Lucy by her considerable scruff of her neck and guided her back to the car. She wasn't happy. Fish went back to walking his dogs. I went home and contemplated nailing the back gate to the fence shut.

Dogs. Love em. They are completely sacked out now and Lucy is chasing cows and sheep in her sleep. Bella is dreaming about whatever dumb dogs dream about.

I'm going to watch Chelsea Lately and hope for a better day tomorrow. A better walk, anyway.

2 comments:

  1. I'm laughing so hard I can't decide whether to wipe the tears out of my eyes or try not to pee my pants. I love that I get a mention in the same post as both Marillion and Chelsea Lately. Thanks for the guffaw. I think I'm going to read it again.

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  2. We get to live with Bella full time so mostly I wipe the tears out of my eyes....

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