After everything that Mom and I have done and the things that we’ve seen, it’s hard to go back to being at home and still find the adventure in it. Mom’s knee is doing a “weird thing,” so we have been going to places where I can run and she doesn’t have to. Today we went to the off-leash dog hiking place. The off leash area used to seem really big, but now that I’ve climbed mountains and stuff it seems silly to go bananas just because Mom took the leash off. Anyway, I couldn’t find anyone to bark at or chase. It was a hot day, so maybe all the dogs were hiding in the shade or something. It wasn’t until we left the off-leash area and were walking back through the leash-y bit that we passed all the dogs that were going to play with me. They had all been turned into legless potatoes!
First we came to a poor yellow lab puppy that had lost all of his legs. “Help me!” he said. “I was just walking along with my lady, and then suddenly here I am on the ground. I know I used to have legs to walk on, but now I’m a potato.” “Ah, you melted,” I told him, sagely. That’s what happens, you guys. There’s nothing you can do to prevent melting, it just happens to you one day and then you’re stuck being a potato for a minute or two till your legs grow back. I’ve found that it helps them grow if you drink water.
Next we passed a mutt whose legs had just grown back by drinking water. He looked like a fine, upstanding guy that maybe I could bark at and chase. But he couldn’t play because his person had been turned to stone. While he drank out of his bowl at her feet, she stood stock still. She wore her head fur down over her neck and shoulders in the way that real people never wear it on hot days, and she was wearing big aviator glasses, which is how people hide their antisociability on sunny days. I looked around to see where she’d hid her selfie-cam but I couldn’t find one. Then I realized that maybe this was a joke and someone had put a mannequin a mile up a hill in the woods to see people’s reactions, so I looked around for the hidden camera. Then the mannequin looked at its phone, and I realized that she wasn’t a potato, she was just a boring person.
Next we met a very handsome gentleman dressed in a tux just like me. Only Oscar and James Bond can wear a tux on a hot day without panting, and this guy was struggling. But as I came past, he rose up from being a potato to say hello and sniff my butt. “It’s a miracle!” said his lady. “He was too hot to walk down the hill, but now that he’s smelled your irresistible butt, he has legs to stand on again!” Now, I was happy for this dog for getting his legs back, and happy for this lady for getting her dog back. But “miracle?” Nah, I’m just blessed with overpowering charisma. But you can’t just walk away from a dog that just got his legs back because of you, because obviously he’s going to follow you. “He’s walking again! Praise Oscar!” the lady gushed, only she pronounced it, ‘good boy,’ and come to think of it I’m not positive she was talking to me. But anyway… We walked on, me with the swagger and him reaching out his neck to sniff my butt, like my butt had him by the leash. But then we came out of the shady patch, and as soon as we were back in the sun his legs crumbled to dust and he went back to being a potato-beast, and Mom and I walked the rest of the way back to the car on our own.
-Oscar, the only hot dog with legs on this grill
コメント