Some things I could tell you about, but won't in the hopes it is just a phase?

I could tell you about how Gustavo today ran up the teeter, just like he has been for months, then had a moment of panic, bailed off the side and acted from then on as if the teeter totter was the evil yet invisible ghost that lives at the dressage ring up the hill from our deck and causes insane barking. Even though he has been a little teeter freak until this very day, always flying up it and slamming it with gusto and intent after my careful protocall of teaching an always fast and confident teeter totter. Rendering it more tater totter now. The frozen kind they serve in prison. To dogs that bark all day at work at an empty dressage ring and won't shut up.


Or how he found a piece of rotten hunk of meat in the field, where he was doing the criminal act of walking around off leash, and pretended he didn't know me. Stranger Danger! Do not know you and do not need to listen to you and in fact, I could just Run Away From You! Evil lady going to take away meat. Other dogs, who have had their share of bad dog days, looking aghast and smug in their dog trained ways. Sort of like the other day when I was late for a wedding and trying to run out the door and he decided that AHA! Fabulous time to dash through the open gate to climb underneath the car and sit there motionless, like a tiny little squirrel statue. A little lawn squirrel, if you kept your lawn squirrel under the car in an oil puddle. When you were in your backless fat-making dress with sequins and late to a wedding.


But if I told you those things, you would say, maybe you need to Train your dog more? Perhaps you should not be allowed to have dogs and should get something more inert. Bunny. Snake. Leaf collection. And I would just sit down right here and weep. So instead, I will tell you they had a hike the other morning and no one chased any deer. Or joggers. Although in the jogger section of the woods, they stay on a leash. Is the redwood forest that is filled with joggers and odd little bearded homeless men carrying their lives in a ratty backpack. That's the kind of magical woods we have around here. Less deer than the other forest probably, because of the joggers and camping fellows. But grasping at straws here for something nice to say.