Bikes!

I take back everything I ever said about bikes! After the whole family was trapped at home for nearly the entire weekend waiting for the Comcast guys to fix my internet, I really had ants in my pants. Mom hasn’t heard back from the vet on the results of her tests, but she can barely run anymore so she didn’t know what she was going to do to relieve the pantsy ants. Then a bright idea struck her. She went into the garage and much to my horror she pulled out a… bicycle! I really didn’t know how to feel about that. I mean, bikes are terrifying, but I love and trust Mom. She’s never done anything to hurt me… except that one time (okay, it was yesterday) that she was doing one of those weird DVD’s and her knee caught me under the jaw (okay, I might have run face first into her knee barking like a maniac, but I gave her a look that said, ‘what the hell is wrong with you?!’). But… I mean… bikes are *really* scary.

It turned out that I didn’t have much choice in the matter anyway, because Mom had me on a leash and she was climbing on top of the bike. She started pedaling real slow and I saw the leash start to uncoil, and once I felt a little pressure on my collar I didn’t have much of a choice but to follow her. When we got to the end of the cul-de-sac she made the same “boop, boop, boop!” sound she makes when we’re running to let me know that she’s turning, and pretty soon I could see that she probably wasn’t going to hit me. At first I thought that Mom would go real slow on the bike just like she does when she’s running, but after about a mile I figured out that no matter how fast I ran, Mom could go faster. She said, “On your mark, get set, GO!” which is what she always says when it’s time to sprint for a few seconds until Mom makes herself heavy on the leash and makes me slow down. But after a few seconds when she would usually be turning into a rock, she was still out in front of me. I kept sprinting for a little longer, and then the darndest thing happened: I got tired and ran out of breath. Suddenly I was the one making myself heavy on the leash and making Mom slow down. Oh dear! Now she can get her revenge for all of those geese, bunnies, cats and squirrels I’d dragged her after at full speed…

When we got home, I ran up and made sure that NotMom was looking at me, then I flopped down on the ground panting with a big, fat smile on my face. Now my toddler neighbor is having a birthday party, and I’m letting everyone walk around in my driveway without even barking at them to keep it down. Bikes are pretty rad!

–Oscar the Pooch