Walking the Goose, Part 51
More bugs
—
November 2nd
2.9 miles
Walking the Goose, Part 52
Dogs are always barking at Goose. People don’t bark as much. But sometimes we get into it too.
Today, a guy is walking towards us and as he got close, Goose tries to jump on him. He gets startled and yells out, “Go ahead, make my day!”
It sounds like a joke. But he’s looking pretty angry. He keeps walking but is turned back glaring at us.
I yell out, “What are you so mad about!?”
He says, “You know what I’m talking about!”
I say, “Don’t be dick, man. No one’s hurting you!”
He says back, “Go ahead, come on over here! We’ll see what happens! You prick!”
I yell back, “You must be having a really bad day!”
He’s still walking. I can go after him. But really? Am I that guy? And he is bigger than me. I’m not actually interested in physically fighting him. Thankfully he isn’t interested either.
We’re just barking.
—
November 3rd
2.88 miles
Walking the Goose, Part 48
The lost Husky is back.
Walked by his house today and saw some movement from behind the gate. Got close, and there he was. At first he’s sniffing at Goose and Goose is sniffing at him.
I say, “Hey, look who’s here.”
Then the Chiwawa gets in on the deal. It starts barking up a storm. The Husky, of course, joins in.
They’re barking and yapping and screeching at us.
They can barely hear me as I say, “Welcome back, guys, welcome back.”
—
October 30th
3.54 miles
Walking the Goose, Part 47
Saw this guy today. Crawling across a rather wide sidewalk. Not really making good time, but slow and steady wins the race, right?
Odds are, he makes it.
But who knows.
A crow could come by and snatch him up. Some random human and step on him, on purpose or inadvertently.
I guess I could have picked him up and put him up on a tree leaf somewhere. But I didn’t. Maybe it’s a Star Trek Prime Directive thing or something. Who knows. But at least the little guy had his moment in the sun.
—
October 29th
3.32 miles
Walking the Goose, Part 46
There are two older women at the park. Each of them have three dogs.
One of them is crazy. I mean that, I believe, with a high degree of compassion. But I also mean it literally. In the clinical sense. Like she can’t test reality accurately. Paranoid Schizophrenia might be an appropriate diagnosis. But I was never really good at diagnosis.
I’ve never met this woman before, but as me and goose come up she’s yelling at us, “What are you doing! Are you crazy! Bringing your dog over here!”
Her dogs are going nuts. They’re little. Which means they’re loud and high pitched. I keep walking.
I tell Goose, “Don’t worry. Just leave it.”
As we pass she’s still yelling at us. And then not yelling any more. Just loudly complaining, “Oh my God, I can’t believe they did that!”
It’s okay. I want to confront her. But what would be the point of that.
Then there’s the other lady. She’s what you might call normal. She stops as we get close and smiles.
She asks me, “Is your dog friendly?”
I say, “Yes, too friendly.”
We let our dogs sniff each other a little bit.
She says, “Your dog is beautiful.”
She says it a couple times. I say, “Thanks.” Then we go on our way.
I wonder what makes someone one way and someone another way. Why one is crazy and one is sane? Genetics? Life experience? Bad choices. Bad personalities. Who knows.
There but by the grace of God go I, tho, right?
—
October 27th
3.32 miles
Walking the Goose, Part 41
Walked by his house. Didn’t see the Husky. Worried a little bit.
—
October 22nd
3.23 miles
Walking the Goose, Part 27
My brain thinks radically different thoughts when walking versus when I’m running. When I’m running, pretty much all my thoughts are about running. About my feet, my legs, my lungs, my pace, my distance. Where I’ve ran, where I’m running to, what I’m gonna eat when I’m done. That’s about 90% of it.
But when I’m walking, almost every thought is set free to wonder about every random thing that crosses my consciousness. Things I’m worried about. Things I’m planning on. Things I’d like do, see, work on. Stories I want to write. Conversations with imaginary friends.
It’s actually a little overwhelming. I’d rather just have quiet up in there.
—
October 6th?
Unknown Distance
Walking the Dog, Part 10
September 19th
2.0 miles
—
According to The Science of Dogs, dogs have 20 times more smell receptors than people. But they have worse eye sight, and actually just moderately better hearing. So really, the dog understands her world through how it smells.
Makes *sense* (see what I did there?) when I’m out with Goose. She can smell the mean dogs at least half a house away. But she doesn’t really seem to recognize the visual cues, e.g. what the mean dogs’s houses look like.
Today, we walk by the house of the crankiest of cranky dogs. A husky and a chihuahua (or something like a chihuahua) that just go off on us every time we pass by their gate. Every time, that is, except for today. Today, for some reason, the chihuahua is locked up in a pen. So only the husky is at the gate. And the husky is actually pretty cool when its by itself.
Goose is not buying it though. She’s keeping her distance, only sneaking up for a couple seconds at a time to get a quick sniff.
Walking the Goose, Part 40
There’s this Husky and Chihuahua that live up the street. They love to bark at me and Goose when we walk by their fence. Except the couple times that the Chihuahua wasn’t there, then the Husky was actually kinda friendly. He even howled at us once when we walked by on the other side of the street.
For the past week or so, I’ve decided I could do without the harassment. So I changed our route to avoid their house. No big deal.
On our new route today, I see a lady in her luxury car make a determined U-turn to come up the street towards us. She pulls up and rolls down her window.
Husker Du, Where Are You?
*
“Have you seen a Husky?” she says.
“No, sorry I haven’t,” I respond, and then, “You guys live up the street, on the corner?”
“Yes,” she says, getting a little frantic.
“Yeah, I know your dogs,” I say, “I’ll keep an eye out. If I see them, I’ll bring them up to you.”
“Thank you,” she says, “They’re both lost. I’ve lost my babies.”
She drives off. I walk around a little extra looking for her dogs. I don’t find them. But I really hope she does. Her dogs are kinda annoying. But they should be home with their family. Being annoying isn’t a good enough reason for someone to be homeless.
—
October 19th
2.69 miles
Walking the Goose, Part 39
Me, Helen and the Goose are out for a short morning walk. We see, up ahead of us, something in the middle of the street.
“Road kill,” says Helen.
“I don’t think so,” I say.
Goose has no comment.
As we get closer, it looks like it’s probably something like a big plastic bag. Several cars run it over. This street is fairly busy.
Then I realize it’s an American flag. Some unexpected jolt of patriotism comes over me and I rush into the street to grab Old Glory before it gets run over again.
As soon as I pick it up, I can tell it’s not just some crappy plastic car flag. It’s heavy and cloth and stitched. It says, “Los Angeles City Election Division” on the hoist. It seems like it belongs to the election people, although the nearest polling place is a couple miles away and the next election isn’t until November 4th.
I fold it up carefully. I’ll hold on to it for a couple weeks. We usually mail in our votes, but it’d be kinda cool to bring the flag over to the polling place and give it to them. Maybe they’ve been missing it.
—
October 18th
1 mile
