How Do Thee Embarrass Me? Let Me Count the Ways*

1. When you run off down the block, and I have to do The Walk of Shame after you — trying to look like it’s no big

   

   deal, while I’ve got a leash in my hand and no dog attached to it.  (That would be you, Ruckus.)

2. When you’re playing fetch at the beach with some stranger you’ve accosted, and it’s time to leave, and I call you, and you won’t come, and I approach you with your leash, and you see me perfectly well but pretend you don’t, and you keep circling the stranger who has the ball, keeping track of my whereabouts in your peripheral vision, and I keep calling you, and you keep ignoring me, and this goes on and on and on . . .   (That would be you, Kemba.)
3. When you pull over to the side of the road to poop on a neighbor’s shrub, and I see the neighbor watching us from the window, and I have a bag out to try to pick up after you, but there’s no way, because the stuff is stuck in the leaves and branches and thorns, and I have to shrug like, I tried.  (Yup, you again, Ruckster.)
4. When you jump on people because, oh, maybe  they have treats in their pocket, or maybe because they’re wearing what you consider an attractive-colored leash around their neck, or who knows why?  (Kemba again.)
5. When you grab another dog’s tennis ball and refuse to give it back.  (Ruck)
6. When you insinuate yourself into someone else’s game of fetch and won’t let up until the other dog-owner gets

   

   aggravated and is forced to leave.  (Kemba)

7. When you run full-speed into the back of my knees, so I fall on my head, get a concussion, then try to pick myself up as if everything’s cool . . . with the entire dog park population gawking at me.  (This was two large, whitish dogs who shall go unnamed.)
8. When you force me to throw to you so much, and for so long, that I damage my right arm and shoulder badly enough that I need physical therapy, and now I have to throw lefty and look like a spaz.  (My dear Kemba, of course.)

There’s lots more, I’m sure, but I prefer not to think about it.

*  Historians are not certain if Elizabeth Barrett Browning was referring to dogs when she composed her Sonnet 43.

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