Today Mom and I spent almost the whole day at the beach. I love the beach because no one has to wear a leash and I can chase whoever I want for miles and miles. Because there are cliffs on one side and the ocean on the other, there’s no risk of Mom and me losing each other, so I can sprint ahead to meet whoever I want, and then play until she waddles past. Once she can’t see me over her shoulder anymore, she calls my name and it’s my job to sprint back to her as fast as I can and tell her all about my adventure. We run for miles like that, and I’m always real relaxed and tired by the time we get back to the car because for every mile that Mom runs, I run 2.
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Once we had climbed the billion feet up the sand dune to the car kennel, I was ready for my nap during the long drive home. But Mom didn’t get in the driving chair. Instead she stood around like she was waiting for something. “Mom, it’s nap time,” I reminded her. “Not yet, Oscar. I’ve got a surprise for you.” Soon, I recognized my Friend who is also a collie. I ran up to her with my butt wiggling. “Oh no! You just missed us! We ran earlier, but now it’s nap time,” I told her. But then she and Mom started walking back toward the billion steps down to sand dune and back to the beach. “Hey, you guys!” I said, trotting after them as slowly as I could get away with. “What about nap time?” But it was no use, Mom had her doggie telepathy turned down and they were determined to fall back down to the beach again.
We walked with my friend-collie back along the beach in the direction that Mom and I had just run. We walked and walked until we were even further down the beach than we had run before, and there was no one around but birds. Then Mom opened her packpack and pulled out my Halloween costume.
For Halloween, Mom dressed as a sailor and I dressed as the Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid is a story of a fish-person who sees a prince playing with his dog and realizes that swimming is scary and she wants to be a human so that she can run around and wrestle with the Prince, just like the dog. She goes to the Sea Witch and asks to be a human, but the sea witch says she has to be debarked in return. So when she sees the Prince, she can’t bark in his face to make him chase her. I won’t tell you how it ends, but it’s a good movie because it’s one of the only ones where the dog doesn’t die at the end.
Anyway, my friend Câline and her people puppy are learning about mermaids right now, so they asked me to take more pictures in my costume, and that’s what Mom intended to do. I wasn’t happy about it, because it wasn’t Halloween anymore. Anyway, the whole point of wearing a costume is to get extra attention and there was no one out here to give me butt scratches. But I’ll do anything to make a loyal fan happy, so I let Mom take the picture. Modeling session over, I plopped myself right on Mom’s foot and insisted that she take off my costume. The problem was that she was walking at the time, and almost faceplanted in the sand.
By the time we got back to the car kennel I was so tired that I was walking a human pace and I thought I was going to faceplant in the sand. Good thing Mom gave me the day off of work tomorrow, because I’ll need all day to sleep off close to 10 miles of sand sprints. The Little Mermaid may have wanted legs, but be careful what you wish for because having legs can sure be exhausting sometimes. I should know, I have four of them so I’m double the expert!
-Oscar the Mermaid
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