Amendment to Dog Blog

MONDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2009

Rusty came up with the bright idea of putting on roller skates to take the chicken dogs for their walk...(I privately suspect that he knew roughly what was going to happen). So, we got out the leashes for Molly and McGee, and I got ready.

Now, before I begin, let me just say that this was an exceedingly BAD IDEA in retrospect. Let me also add, "DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!"

Let me set the scene for you...I am standing there on the porch with goggles, knee and elbow pads, in shorts and a T-shirt (Which should have been made out of Kevlar), and on my feet I have on my daughters roller skates...(Which by the way, did not quite fit). I had been really good water skier growing up in California, and quite the snow skier in high school in Minnesota, so I figured that I could manage to keep my balance behind to frantically charging dogs.

First, it is not possible to know that Molly and McGee were terrified of a little pink bicycle with Bratz stickers and matching pink tassels...so that part was clearly not my fault...the rest we simply didn't think through clearly or did not anticipate.

I had Rusty standing by with a weed whacker ready to be fired up, and we had picked a long stretch of level road that was relatively straight for our little experiment. The plan was for me to walk across the grass to the middle of the roadway, give the signal to Rusty, who would fire up the weed whacker behind the dogs, and they would be off an running like good sled dogs.

I was all set to go, when my daughter Michelle came riding up on her pink Bratz bike from the direction of the flat stretch of road...She of course was curious about what we were doing...Michelle dumped the bike in the grass right next to the dogs, and with nails a scratching, legs flailing, and eyes as wide as silver dollars, Molly and McGee took off like a shot in exactly the wrong direction...

After negotiating the Barbecue grill (I really need to move that thing), and with me taking several giant leaps on the grass, we plunged into the roadway...I whipped past Rusty who was now trying desperately to fire up the weed whacker to get them turned around, and managed to get it started just after we passed which shot the dogs from warp drive into hyper-light speed...

As we quickly approach the crest of an exceedingly steep hill, which swooped down into a fairly gentle curve, and then back up a pretty hefty incline, I decided that although this was decidedly NOT the plan, it could work out just fine...I squatted down on the skates, and tucked in my chin like a down hill racer, and we started going WAY too fast! The wheels on the skates started to wobble, the pavement rocketed by, and still I was pretty optimistic that our dog skiing experiment was going to turn out just fine...(Boy was I wrong!)

As we reached the bottom of the hill, and started negotiating the turn, we were quickly coming up on the end of the wrought iron fence on my right, and I glanced off to my right at the small children's park, and the wooded valley beyond.

Two unfortunate things happened at precisely that moment...(Just two? Don't make me laugh...) which started the domino effect into disaster...Firstly, up ahead a car back fired which got the dogs attention, and secondly, just then a neighbor just on the other side of the park fired up his hedge trimmer...

The dogs immediately took a 90 degree turn into the children's park..As luck would have it, one of those drainage grates was at the edge of the road, and all eight tires of the skates suddenly sunk into the holes, and immediately got stuck...With a sinking feeling of impending doom, I found myself lifted into the air, with no skates, and one sock dangling half off (I had the presence of mind to think that had I laced the skates tighter I would be at this moment picking cement curb out of my teeth!).

I flew through the air, bouncing off of first the end of the wrought iron fence, (Ow! say it with me!), a trash can, (Ow!), a drinking fountain (Ow!), a picnic table (Ow!), a swing ste (Ow!), followed by a Jungle Jim (It was plastic and metal...Ow and ugh!) The next part I'm a little fuzzy on...it all happened so fast, but, the dogs sped down a sharp incline with sharp rocks (Ow, ow, ow, ooh, ow!), followed by a wooded area filled with stickers, briers, and thorns (just keep saying ow from here on out).

Why anyone would surround a small thicket of thorny bushes with barbed wire, I'll never know...But, we managed to tear that down and bring it with us the rest of the way...(Keep saying ow!)

If memory serves...it was the muddy sink hole next, followed by the area the teenagers party in, which was littered with garbage and broken beer bottles (Can I have a chorus of ow!'s please?)...Somewhere in there I ricocheted off of two or three tree stumps (Who's counting right?), and some wild raspberry plants which shredded my t-shirt and shorts...

Now, imagine you are standing in your back yard in a quiet suburban neighborhood, when you hear a huge commotion in the normally quiet underbrush, punctuated by girlish screams, panicked expletives, and grunts of pain...And out comes two bounding beagles dragging a hapless creature with one dangling sock, covered in mud, blood, garbage, and tattered bits of cloth...(The goggles and knee pads has come off somewhere along the way.)

At this point, the beagles finally ran out of gas and stripped at the peculation pond...And I finally had the presence of mind to let go of the leashes...I groaned and opened one swollen eye (The other wouldn't open for several days), spit an ole McDonald's french fry bag out of my mouth, said "Oh, my God!", and passed out face down in the dirt...(And, was it just me, or was that the sound of Rusty laughing?)

As I came to, the dogs were already licking my wounds...Then, McGee pulled off my remaining sock and ran off with it...Well, I won't be doing THAT again any time soon...