Thursday, June 19, 2008

Wisdom and Timing

For all his wisdom and beauty, his sensitivity and gentleness, it must be said that Duncan certainly knows how to crash a party.

Nearly every afternoon on our walks through the park or down around the lake, Summer revelers have gathered to picnic, play volleyball or Ultimate, practice soccer, or merely lounge in the grass, their faces and tanned bodies illuminated by the sun, their blankets spread out with their collections of food, coolers and boom boxes. Nothing makes people happier than frolicking and laying under a warm blue sky, unless they can do it in large groups, be they family or friends, schoolmates or veterans organizations, those annoying spandex clad women who practice strollaerobics, after work league or people like me, who just stop to chat up strangers as we make our way through to somewhere––and occasionally nowhere––else. People like to gather, and Duncan likes the gathering of people. If only his timing were better.

It seems that the moment we approach people, near their picnic tables or on the edges of their games, Duncan decides there is no finer place to manage a Big Job and so he does his little circle and sniff dance, squats, circles and sniffs some more, then gets down to business. Dogs tend to look somewhat embarrassed by the whole procedure, and Duncan is no exception, but it gets worse when I'm standing nearby, leash in hand, smiling politely at the family gathered around their potato salad and brats watching the whole thing with a look of disgust on their faces.

In such situations it's difficult to chat people up and so I smile, a tight closed-mouth grin, and bob my head, offering my sighs and the occasional shrug until he's done and kicking the grass out from behind him.

Tonight, near the Dave Saunders Memorial Baseball field, the little twit got kind of ballsy and actually attempted to mark someone's cooler as his own, raising his leg and sidling right up to it. I gasped as an older woman, a tight-cheeked former member of the Juicy Bun club, pointed and tried to speak but couldn't find the words. "Duncan," I cried and pulled him away. He shot me a "What gives? It was almost ours!" kind of look and ambled along beside me.

Such tremendous wisdom.

5 comments:

Greg said...

Oh, what a fun way to meet people!!

Does Duncan do that thing with the grass (or dirt)after he poos where he flings it in some random direction completely unrelated to where the poo is?

I'd be worried in a park that Em would be flinging grass and stuff onto people's picnic blankets.

She, too, is a master of bad timing!

Charlie said...

Big mistake! That cooler probably had really good stuff and you lost it.
- Charlie

Curt Rogers said...

Maybe I should actually teach Duncan to go after coolers so that we can see what sort of loot we can claim as our own!

Good idea!

Greg said...

Blessed midsummer to you both!!

My own little celebration will be auto-posted while I'm hard at work later this morning (rockin' the auto post!)--hope you guys have a most excellent day!

Now get out there and get some coolers--just make sure you got D trained to choose equally amongst meat and beer...and don't shy away from the dessert coolers, either!

Rick said...

The brother to my lab since getting fixed prefers to squat. Always. I thought he got fixed not a sex change. I like Duncan's style. ;)