Today’s run report starts late last night, when we were all snoozing in our beds… Suddenly I heard the dog door make a noise. Since the whole family was in the room with me, it had to be an intruder! I ran screaming out of the room and right through the dog door into the bathroom. Sometimes I run outside like my pants are on fire to bark at the wind, so at first Mom and NotMom thought it was just a false alarm, but when they heard me barking, “Get out of my bathroom, you filthy trash panda!” instead of, “And stay out!” they both ran out to the bathroom to back me up. But before reinforcements could arrive, the horrible trash panda lunged at me, and I ululated my war cry at the nasty beast. No sooner had the kerfuffle started, NotMom (who has longer legs) burst around the corner and the horrible Trash Panda ran away. Those things are as big as I am (and even more solidly built), I don’t know how in the heck it got over our six-foot fence around the bathroom other than demon magic!
Once we got back inside everyone was wide awake and buzzing with adrenaline except my stupid cat-sister, who gets up and flees the house every time I sneeze, but hadn’t moved a whisker during this whole ordeal. My parents checked me over thoroughly to make sure I hadn’t sustained any injuries from the intruder, and then we all went back to bed. But no one slept much after that (except my stupid cat-sister!). Now that I knew that the things that go bump in the night are real, I kept barking all night every time I heard a leaf stir in the bathroom.
I may have been keyed up from my heroic adventure, but Mom was like a zombie all morning. She kept starting something, then running out to the bathroom to tell me to stop barking, and then coming back into the kitchen and forgetting to finish what she started. It was a wonder we got out the door at all! But have you ever noticed that the runs when you thought you were too tired to run sometimes turn into your best ones? It took me a good half hour to warm up, but once I did, Mom and I burned rubber back to the house so I could get there for egg time.
I was starting to flag as we were leaving My Trail and almost back to the house, but then all of a sudden I saw another critter! A squirrel ran along a fence and then jumped across the trail and through a hole in another fence. I spotted it and took off after it as fast as I could drag Mom.I was going to have to go around the post blocking the trailhead to cars. At first the squirrel was on the right, so I ducked right. Then it moved toward the left, so I veered left. Then it hesitated, and I fainted like I was going to go right again. Then it sprinted as fast as it could to the left, with me hot on its heels. Mom, meanwhile, was dragging behind me an went smack into the pole. She wasn’t too happy about that. But I checked her over to make sure that the post hadn’t bit her, and … nah, I’m kidding, I didn’t care about Mom. I dragged her all the way home in a big hurry for egg time. When I came inside, I was crushed to find that the house was dark and NotMom wasn’t even up yet! The dummy had decided to sleep in after our midnight adventure and didn’t have my snack ready for me when I came in the door! After everything I do for this family! Life just isn’t fair sometimes.
-Oscar the Security Dog
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