rumplestiltskin
Yesterday the dogs decided they were going with me to the Kid Factory to pick up Zor. Yes, I know who is supposed to be in charge, but they staked out the van for a half an hour.
Who could say no? Not I. Especially after a half hour of trying to get them inside and they just sat there looking at me. So off we zoomed. To the Kid Factory! where noses quivered and butts wagged and Kelly managed to blow the horn and scare the crap out of herself.
She quickly recovered, but not quite enough to resume standing on the steering wheel. Standing on me though, yes.
Then we collected Zor and returned home, where we caught--CAUGHT!!--an older lady with a cane walking the cutest Pomeranian on Cobie and Kelly's sidewalk.
Well, the sidewalk across the street, but same difference, right?
So they charged out the garage's mandoor and into the back yard and to the west gate, where they sniffed some more and wiggled some more, and yipped some more.
Well, I think I've mentioned that this is a pretty dog friendly neighborhood, yet not a particularly dog-snobby neighborhood. The west neighbor has a gorgeous black something, probably border-lab mix. The neighbor on the east has either at least three and maybe four dogs. One is a Dane mix, one's a boxer, and the other I saw for sure was a blue merle something or other. Cobie and Kelly are always trying to play with them through the fence, charging up and down, then freezing with their eyeballs inches from the cracks between the six-foot fence boards, trying to see each other.
Let me win the lottery and I'm getting me some awesome chainlink like they have at the dog park...
Well I should have said Cobie tries to stare through the cracks. Kelly bites him on the butt while he's distracted, and he tries to stop her by sitting on her head. In the mud. This is a hellacious mud season for a person with a small white dog and a large brown dog that likes to roll the small white dog in the mud the way old know-it-alls do crosswords in ink to pass the time and just because they can...
Ok, focusing now...
Cobie and Kelly are at the west gate, yipping at the pom, and the Dane starts barking on the east side. I look over, and see this face...this ugly ugly face, bouncing up and down, wth loose skin flapping in the vertical wind. I had a fever of 102F at the time and--just for a split second, mind you--I was seeing the world's ugliest man, or a gnome, a goblin, Rumplestiltskin maybe, leaping up and down. When dogs do this, I say they're bouncing up and down on an invisible pogo stick...and the neighbors have a pogo stick.
That was kind of alarming, I must say, even after I realized it was only--only--the Dane mix and not the worlds biggest evil gnome.
Then my muddled up brain realized this was only a case of, "Hay you guyyyyz! What about meeee?"
That dog didn't stop bouncing, either, until Cobie and Kelly came over and performed the racing-up-and-down-the-fence-staring-between-the-boards-biting-Cobie's-butt-sitting-on-Kelly's-head-in-the-mud ritual.
Well that's what happened. This little story has no proper ending other than, "Life went on as usual." So I'll just say I hope no Rumplestiltskins are leaping up and down on invisible pogo sticks looking over your fence.