MindSpinner

Spring break is at an end, a succession of eventful and mostly happy days that left time only for fleeting peeks at my blog roll and email now and then. Posts to follow, I hope, for there’s lots that wants writing. But from now until June 2, school picks up speed like a freight train churning down a steep grade.

There was, over break, time for dog walking, which, in the case of the resident dogs, is something close to an Olympic sport, requiring endurance, speed, advanced problem solving and leash untangling, emergency rescues, puddle jumping, and a willingness to chase rabbits. I know they appear to be small dogs, perhaps just 10 inches at the shoulder if you measure with a ruler, but their size is an optical illusion. In fact, these are big strong perpetual motion creatures who project a cloaking device.

Output for christening tall weeds, fence posts, and telephone poles, one after another, also suggests that their design conceals water tanks of virtually unlimited capacity or the ability to extract water out of the air via rapid respiration. Tongues are probably involved. Other evidence suggests that they may also have teeth of steel and small backhoes and other earth-moving equipment instead of mere paws.

When they are not at home, having dug out of the reinforced perimeters of their fenced yard, they may usually be found partying in a neighbor’s trash can or cooling their heels at the local canine bed and breakfast known as the Animal Shelter. Oh, of course, there is a real fence, conscientiously constructed. It’s reinforced at the bottom with chicken wire and heavy rocks and blocks. Never you mind all that. Chicken wire is for chewing up and spitting out. Rocks and blocks are for pushing out of the way. Dirt is for digging. I’m thinking about cinder blocks secured with rebar next. Or a perimeter trench filled with concrete. (No doubt that’s when they’ll take up pole vaulting.)

Taking pictures of them is no small challenge. There’s the perpetual motion problem, for starters, resulting in lots of pictures of white blurs purporting to be half a dog.

One also notes a certain disinterest, on their part, in posing for the camera.

Sometimes, however, one them can surprise the unwary photographer by suddenly standing still. I’m still trying to determine whether this one was momentarily arrested by a fleeting thought or whether he froze the better to receive a transmission from the Mother Ship, no doubt regarding yet another an out-of-yard reconnaissance mission.

The same question has been posed to me in a variety of ways, sometimes tactfully and sometimes bluntly: “What possessed you to get these dogs?” I give the general impression, it seems, of making mostly sane, well-informed and thought-out decisions - except for my inexplicable adoption of the wacky dogs. I could plead that I was the victim of a form of mind control exerted by two eight-week-old pups some three years ago. But then I’d be displacing responsibility. No, truth is I fell for the “cute and adorable” cloaking device deployed by this merry band of brothers, for bellies upturned for the rubbing, for the sheer joie de vivre coursing through their veins. They can be exasperating, that’s for sure; but when they are around, it is hard to be glum.

(Credits: Dual dog walking and dog photo blogging would have been impossible were it not for the able and intrepid dog walker who captained the canine crew on their spring break adventures.)