What A Drag!

My poor dog has not had his regular walks since the girls have been on winter break. I usually take him after I drop them off at school and we find interesting and different places to go around the school. I enjoy the change of scenery since I'm tired of the same loops leaving our house by now.

You can imagine how excited he was to be out and about on the girls' first day back to school today. He was doing a lot of pulling, like a bad-dog, but I forgave him because I felt guilty he'd been cooped up. A couple yanks of the leash and he chilled out a bit. We were a mere ten-minutes into my walk this morning when disaster struck.

We had just gotten to the top of a little hill when it was time to decide whether to go around the street loop or continue up the big hill towards the open space. I must have been distracted or daydreaming because all of a sudden Mooch took off. Before I even knew what was happening, I was in the air.

I let out a guttural scream and hit the dirt and mud on the fly. Too shocked to let go quickly enough, I was dragged a few feet before the leash left my hands. Stunned, I looked up to see my dog with his nose in the fence of a yard where there must have been a dog on the other side.

I got up. I didn't even brush myself off. I could feel my knee throbbing and it felt like blood was dripping. I checked to see if I ripped my jeans - I did not - and started walking back to the car. I was done. I scraped my hands, arms, legs, chest, stomach and my chin on that dirt and mud. I didn't even care if my dog followed me or not. I didn't call him or grab his leash or even look at him. I just walked.

Mooch, interest in the fenced dog complete, started following me. He walked closer to me than he did when I had the leash in my hand. Then he trotted a bit ahead of me at an angle. When I realized that he was trotting at an angle so that he wouldn't step on the big retractable leash handle that he was dragging I just started laughing. I took the leash off of his collar and started fantasizing that he would get hit by a car when we got to the busy street we were approaching.

Alas, he did not. He even got in the car without any coaxing as is normally required.

When I took my clothes off to take my shower, I had dirt clods fall out of my sleeves and mud caked into my belt buckle and my watch band. What a drag!