It was a lovely night. \u00a0We had finished dinner and I suggested a walk. \u00a0For everyone’s sake, ours, the dog’s, we all need the exercise.<\/p>\n
We started down the street and headed for the park. \u00a0It really was a beautiful evening. \u00a0It had rained earlier and was now warm and sunny. \u00a0The best of June.<\/p>\n
We paused at the end of the block to let two young neighbors pet the dog. \u00a0Then we moved on.<\/p>\n
The park would have several softball games going on, I knew Larry would want to watch. \u00a0So we selected a small set of bleachers behind home plate. \u00a0Only one other person was on those bleachers and the dog would be able to sit on the ground.<\/p>\n
We watched several innings. \u00a0Larry was whistling a song he had played before we left home. \u00a0Mocha was up and down the three bleacher seats checking everything out. \u00a0Occaissionally she would sit at my feet.<\/p>\n
And then…<\/p>\n
And then one of the players, a thin man, a few years our senior, approached Mocha, unseen by me until he spoke, “Well you look like a nice…”<\/p>\n
Mocha’s hackles went up and she began jumping against the short leash I had her on…snapping<\/em>.<\/p>\n She wanted to bite him. !!! \u00a0As I grabbed for her collar her would be admirer realized his mistake and backed away.<\/p>\n I was stunned. \u00a0Apologetic. \u00a0Mocha, now subdued, sat quietly looking at me.<\/p>\n Well.<\/p>\n Time to move on, I think. \u00a0So we did.<\/p>\n As we approached the fire station at the edge of the park Mocha had to poop.<\/p>\n This<\/em> at least, I was prepared for, I thought. \u00a0I took the plastic grocery bag I brought from home out of my pocket and waited for her to finish. \u00a0But I was not<\/em> prepared for what would happen next.<\/p>\n Some of her poop was dangling from her bottom, and she freaked, absolutely freaked<\/em>. She began spinning in circles, rubbing against the sidewalk, smearing poop everywhere.<\/p>\n I picked up what I could, but she continued her frenzied dance across the street, out of control, panicked by a small piece of poop hanging by a thread. \u00a0We couldn’t save her, we couldn’t stop her. \u00a0She was being driven wild by her own poop.<\/p>\n Now I was laughing so hard I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t talk. \u00a0And I could no longer control my bladder.<\/p>\n We had reached the main road and I was chagrined by the idea of walking home down Beech Daly, with my crazy dog, having just peed my pants.<\/p>\n Then my phone rang. \u00a0It was for Larry. \u00a0I tried to trade him the dog leash for the phone, but he resisted thinking I wanted him to carry the bag of poop.<\/p>\n As we finally rounded the block toward home we reflected on the turns our quiet evening walk had taken.<\/p>\n “This is supposed to be helping my blood pressure,” Larry observed. “But by the time I go back to the Dr. it will be up ten points. \u00a0He’ll ask me, What have you been doing? And I’ll say, Exactly what you told me to do: diet and exercise.”<\/p>\n “I’m angry all the time because I can’t eat what I want, and I’m stressed every day because I take the dog for a walk.”<\/p>\n Diet and exercise. \u00a0He always knew it would be the death of him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was a lovely night. \u00a0We had finished dinner and I suggested a walk. \u00a0For everyone’s sake, ours, the dog’s, we all need the exercise. We started down the street and headed for the park. \u00a0It really was a beautiful evening. \u00a0It had rained earlier and was now warm and sunny. \u00a0The best of June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2O0qX-ey","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.choosingcomedy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}