We have been here before

 

I SO HATE OTHER PEOPLE’S DOGS.  Oh, all right, some other people’s dogs.  Or rather, some other dogs’ people.

Peter and I had our monthly tune-up with Tabitha today which means I have no brain and no physical coherence—which further means not only are my sentences at risk, getting the right body parts on the keyboard to create said sentences is an odds-against activity—but I make Peter get thumped first while I hurtle shifts of hellcritters while I still can.*  Hellcritters and I have a standard circuit which begins with a public footpath running through a thin strip of wood with a private field on one side and a busy road on the other.  Hellhounds and I hadn’t gone far today when we came round a fallen tree and there . . . was an off-lead unaccompanied meatloaf.  Dog.  Large.  Looked like a [border] collie cross—collie/Godzilla, perhaps.  I am not very good at reading dog body language but I don’t like alert and interested in an unaccompanied off-lead dog the general dimensions of a medium-sized tractor.  We couldn’t get (illegally) into the farmer’s field through the hedge of brambles and nettles**.

. . . Darkness at this interesting juncture decided he had found the perfect place to have a crap.  Darkness does not defecate quickly.  I know you’re not supposed to stare at strange dogs so I edged around a little so the thing was in my peripheral vision and I should see if it charged.

It didn’t charge.

Darkness completed his endeavour.

I risked a look at Kubota***.  Both its head and its tail were slightly higher and more alert, and it had put its second forepaw—previously raised inquiringly—on the ground.

I cranked my two in to heel position, left Darkness’ offering to the arboreal gods because I did not want to be one-handed and off balance if Kubota decided to charge after all—and we marched briskly down the bank and into the road.

We were not flattened by a runaway fourteen-wheeler but that we were spared, in a karmic† sort of way, may explain why my other road luck has been unusually bad lately.††  Our mysterious survival was not for lack of trying.  We were having our ears/hair pasted back by the slipstreams of the stuff passing us.  While Kubota trotted along on the footpath parallel to us, still alert and interested, and ready, no doubt, to repel boarders if we tried to climb the bank again.  We must have walked three minutes—which is a long time if you’re being buzzed by juggernauts—till there was a break in the traffic and we could scuttle across and . . . I would still be there except a bounding hellhound in each hand gave me enough additional momentum to climb the wretched bank.

I looked across the river of flying metal to the footpath side and Kubota had picked up speed and was now cantering gaily toward a tall stooped tottering figure at the far end of the path, which turned around (still tottering) to greet Kubota, who was now flat-eared and waggy-tailed.  SNARL.  Does this joker, whoever he—probably he from the height—is get extra points for walking his beloved dog despite his physical limitations?  NOT WHEN HE’S PUTTING OTHER PEOPLE AND THEIR DOGS’ PHYSICAL LIMITATIONS AT RISK OF BEING FRELLING ROADKILL.

I had been planning on responding to forum comments tonight.††

* * *

* Since the hellterror is easily amused in a wider variety of ways, this usually works out that hellhounds get a proper walk, and hellterror gets a thrilling sprint around a few fields and a bit of road she only sees once a month.  YAAAAAAAAAH.  If the 26-foot extending lead were a little bit longer she would leap over houses.^

^ And I may have seriously damaged a little old lady’s+ health this morning while I was chasing the hellterror around a sapling in the churchyard in New Arcadia.  Generally speaking I make her—the hellterror, that is, not random old ladies—go the correct way around obstacles which is to say she has to come to my side because I am the hellgoddess and she is a minion.++  The rules change somewhat when hucklebutting is occurring.  If we had more and better spaces for hucklebutting I’d enforce her using them, but we don’t, so if she takes it into her manic little head to hucklebutt in what would be a perfectly good space if it weren’t for some frelling TREE in the way—I may try and let her.  This involves me pelting around said tree several times, including tendon-snapping changes of direction, and probably finishes with her doing her end-swapping thing, which usually gets mixed up in the last (or so) circuit, and may involve the both of us getting tangled up in 26 feet of (extending) lead.  I was rather pleased with us today—even if I was a trifle dizzy—till I looked up because of the funny noise, and found a little old lady stopped on the path next to us, bent over her frelling cane and purple with laughter. . . .

+ that is, older than me

++ hahahahahaha

** By mid-November the nettles are probably relatively harmless, but I wouldn’t want to rely on it, and brambles are knife-wielding thugs all year long.

*** Makes a change from John Deere, which is the maker of the only tractorish machinery I’ve ever been on speaking terms with.  http://www.kubota.co.uk/

† Turning Christian hasn’t stopped me considering other possibilities.  As my monk says, us Christians may have some surprises when [sic] we get to heaven.

†† I had some woman with a grievance stop and get out of her car yesterday to yell at me for nearly running into her.  I didn’t anything like nearly run into her;  it’s a particularly brutal blind corner and you have to creep out at .000002 miles an hour prepared to slam on the brakes the moment you see something.  I saw her.  I slammed on the brakes.  Maybe she should find an alternate route.^  And, speaking of slamming on the brakes, on my way to Nadia yesterday I had a near-fourteen wheeler . . . maybe twelve . . . change lanes into me.  He^^ didn’t even signal.  Just changed lanes.  Fortunately Wolfgang’s elderly brakes are in prime condition.  I laid enough rubber I should probably have the frelling wheels checked.  Arrrrrrrgh.^^^

^ She was also totally blocking traffic while she indulged her inner banshee by shrieking at me.

^^ Yup.  I’m assuming it’s a he.

^^^ It interests me in a cool, intellectual way that the adrenaline spike from that little incident was less than when I thought Pav and I were going to get eaten by the hairy four-legged barn the other evening.  Maybe I was just more excited about being on the way to Nadia than being on the way to tower practise.+

+ Well . . . yes.

†† I do live in a small rural-ish village.  I Street Pastor at the nearest small(ish) city with something resembling a nightlife.^  And if the weather gets rough I won’t be able to do it;  I am not driving home at 4 a.m in anything the faintest bit inclement.

^ New Arcadia’s night life consists of the butcher’s delivery van arriving at about one a.m., bless him, since that’s one fewer delivery van clogging up the main road during the day.