My dog actually wrote this one. At least I think he did. It's much as he told it to me, nearly word for word.


He sits there on his table and watches, gaze roving much like a hunter’s as he watches and waits, again like a hunter.

Sometimes he walks with me and those are the best. Mostly though, as much as I can remember, he sits and watches. It’s not like he’s talking to other people giving pats away to any who come asking, nothing like that. He just watches and gives the occasional acknowledgment to a passerby.

Me, I run. I run and run and run. I love to run. I walk a lot too because sometimes when I’m running I get just the barest hint of a whiff, my nose is REALLY sensitive, of a cool smell but it’s so mixed up with all the other smells, cool and not so cool, that if I don’t follow it immediately, I often have a hard time picking it up again. Of course that may also be due to the fact that when we’re there I have the attention span of a gnat. There is just too much to see and smell; too much territory to claim as mine own, now and forever, over and over, to take the time to stop from a full out run to chase down a little tail or another male who thinks he’s a Big Dog when it simply isn’t so.

I wonder sometimes where those left behind scents go. If I didn’t smell them would they even exist? Were they there just for the few moments that I was passing by, a coincident of proportions I simply cannot communicate but are really really big? Then sometimes I wonder if my sole purpose was to smell that smell, catch a hint of that scent, inhale that musk, just to acknowledge its existence.

Then I go run some more and forget all about it. There are so many shoulders to bump and eyes to look into, and all the while, moving moving moving.

Sometimes I like going right up to the ones that think they are Big Dogs. They just don’t know what to make of me I think. Some I’ve palavered with have known rue and some were just lucky. I’m not big and I don’t reeeaaaalllyyyy start stuff, but I rarely back down.

I get a kick out of watching whoever thinks he’s the Alpha Male have to re-think when I show up. Some of them have a really tough time of it too. In my experience not all who think they are the Big Dogs can think worth a puppy’s poop.

I know that while I’m doing my thing, mostly running, that he keeps an eye on me. There have been one or two of the Big Dogs who had friends help them out and while I can handle myself well, multiple opponents are never fun, it’s nice to know someone is watching my back. It’s comforting in a way that you won’t understand unless you’ve ever lost it. I’m glad he’s there, even if he doesn’t move so much or so fast as he used to.