I’ve never been one to think the universe sends me messages — among other reasons, I’ve moved a few times and never left it my forwarding address.* But late this afternoon, a message may have been received as Muriel and I headed outside at the usual time so she could do her business. It was delivered by a flying shoe.**
Again I was sans trekking pole, my left ankle mostly useless, and before opening the door I exhaled, steeling myself for the propulsive force of Muriel’s enthusiasm. What I didn’t expect was that the propulsion wouldn’t stop, or that her gritty determination (and impressively low center of gravity), which claimed an iPad casualty in June, would endanger something else today: my patience.
Once I’m safely out of the house I can normally plant myself, more or less, which limits how far her lunging can carry us. This time around, she got the jump on me — I didn’t realize anything was amiss and expected to walk forward a couple feet and stop. She darted to my left, which isn’t unusual, but didn’t stop, yanking me across the patio and launching one of my shoes into the air. It landed a few feet away, no pun intended, in the grass.
Muriel’s speed, strength and purposefulness caught me off-guard: I’d looked outside before opening the door and hadn’t seen anything that might interest her. Since I wasn’t concerned about shenanigans, the leash was possibly in my bad hand; that would account for some of my inability to stop her. My initial fear, as I reeled clumsily behind, was that a dead or injured animal was nearby, perhaps wounded by the Westie next-door and vulnerable to further attack. Then I realized the problem was the Westie himself.
He was digging at the fence, as he’s wont to do, but this time he’d struck gold, finding a spot where there was already a gap at the bottom of a panel heavily weathered by age. Excitedly, he thrust his adorable little face forward to see if he could push into our yard. Muriel was incensed and charged to the fence, but she didn’t want a physical confrontation: she wanted to angrily bark nonstop until he went away. “Enough,” I told her as I regained the upper hand, and though she was indignant as I marched her back inside, she turned sheepish when the door closed behind us.
An hour or so later, after she calmed down and I’d plugged the gap with a piece of scrap wood (retrieving my shoe along the way), I reached for her leash and we gave it another try. She walked at my pace, did what she needed to do, and docilely returned to the house, looking up at me with liquid brown eyes that seemed concerned I was still mad. I was, of course — at the rate things are going, she’s going to injure us both soon enough — but curbing her impulsivity is my responsibility and so is reinforcing good behavior.
Holding her gaze, I cheerfully praised her and said “Come with me.” We went to the refrigerator, where I opened a quarter-pound bag of deli meat purchased just for her and tore off a small piece as a treat. High value treats are one of the tools I’ll use to keep her engaged with a training refresher, and though I feel like an idiot buying deli meat or Hebrew National (or Nathan’s) hot dogs for a dog, that’ll be a future reward. My reward will be holding onto my shoes — and not ending up in traction.
* Nor do I believe in horoscopes or healing crystals, and when people blame things on Mercury being in retrograde my first thought, kept private, is “Are you kidding me?”
** One Shoe Makes it Murder, costarring Angie Dickinson and the great Robert Mitchum, is one of the movies I forgot about last night when listing half-finished reviews. Its title came to mind as I pondered what to call this post.