This was a very busy week for me at the office so I was pooped-with-a-capital-P. I was so pooped that I slept in until sunrise yesterday morning and didn’t take Mom for a run. Instead, we ran at the end of the day. What was extra weird was that we left from the work and took one of my collies (that’s what you call a Friend that you work with) along with us. So it was a meeting.
My collie is not from The City, so she doesn’t know about all the dangerous things that you can see on a run here, like snakeboarders. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you,” I thought without actually telling her. She’d see soon enough…




I looked around me, and all around the open area in front of the Starbucks, there were fiends flying through the air or buzzing around in circles, waving their horrible arms and trying to conjure more evil out of the sidewalk. (And you wonder why I don’t like being left alone outside of Starbucks!) I lunged and roared at the swarm so ferociously that Mom and I stood still for a moment, tied in an all-in game of leash tug-of-war. Finally, I gave one last menacing bark to the swarm of hobgoblins and followed Mom down the sidewalk.
A minute later, the first demon grabbed two of his friends and followed us down the I’mbarkadero. I felt the growling bearing down on us, and when I looked back they were catching up to us with enormous, sweeping paddle strokes of their horrible saggy legs. “BACK OFF!” I shouted so hard my voice cracked, but they didn’t slow even a bit. “Oh no! There are more of them!” my collie screamed, pointing to another Starbucksless waiting area. “Let’s get out of here!” Mom groaned. And then she said, “boop! boop!” which means, “look at me because this leashing is about to get technical.” But who could boop! boop! at a time like this? I shouted and screamed like a Tasmanian devil until the demons joined the new horde and Mom dragged me away yet again. As we resumed our stride, I turned to my collie and grinned. “Wasn’t that a barrel of laughs?!”


Oscar the Charmer
(PS These pictures are from a different run the day before, when we weren’t too haunted to stop and take pictures)
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