Spring leak

Mondays are bad enough but when it's a Monday like this past Monday, rain verging on snow, temperature at 1 degree and dropping, and Sunday's warm spring breeze transformed into a late fall-like bluster, it's painful. Waking up is painful. Looking out the window is painful. Stepping out the door is especially painful.

Rocky in his sky blue raincoat doesn't care about weather as he bounds out the door. Even with his old arthritic hips, he's still very much a bounder though now sometimes his bounding verges on blundering. Stella, on the other hand, sticks her head out the door and then looks at me.

She says, "Okay, Smartyboy, you can turn the lights on and off. Why can't you turn the rain on and off? You're obviously not trying hard enough. Go ahead. Flick the switch. I'll wait."

"No can do, Stella. It's walk in the rain or nothing," and Stella's about to head back to bed but the leash I'm holding stops her and she she knows it going to be miles before she naps again.

"You're a heartless prick," she says but I pretend I don't hear her and off we go.

At the park, I release Rocky from his heal, not that he ever heals all that well but you know, it's all about the trying, and he is so overjoyed he no longer has to walk beside me but gets to walk at the end of his leash three feet ahead of me that he bounds those 3 feet all smiles and wagging nub. Stella gives me her usual oh brother look and keeps pace beside me and a little to the back, basically as far away from Rocky as possible.

Stella finds an interesting odor by a garbage can and lowers her head and starts to do some serious investigating. Rocky, having missed that spot is all, "Whoa, what's that?" and he comes bounding back, shoving Stella out of his way and gives the spot a sniff and then lifts his leg and pees on Stella's head which is still lowered to the ground. Stella, braintrust that she is, doesn't notice, I guess because it's raining and just keeps sniffing the ground while Rocky's pee splatters against her ear. I pull her back and I'm like, "Stella, the fuck? Rocky just peed on you, you dingbat," but Stella's all "Wha?" and "Huh?" and really doesn't know what the fuss is about.

Rocky, for his part has lowered his leg and is now walking and peeing at the same time. He pee walks quite often and is always very nonchalant about it and it reminds me of ... I don't know ... it's like if the I.T. guy at work - 'cause I think Rocky would be an I.T. guy if he were human, but not the smart I.T. guy who can fix your computer remotely in like 15 seconds but the not so swift I.T. guy who has to actually come to your office and ends up spending half the day there eating burritos and farting and sucking his fingers clean every time before typing magic words on your keyboard which he swears will fix what ails the machine, but you both end up just staring at the monitor for what seems like hours waiting for nothing to happen - it's like if that guy suddenly just decided to take his shoes and socks off and then continued to work on your computer in his bare feet. Uh, well, maybe that's not the best comparative example but it is an example of someone here at work and I just had to get that out there.

Okay, so I can't come up with a human equivalent to Rocky's pee walking but suffice it to say, I'm glad it's raining because it at least washes away the evidence. One time with pee walking Rocky, a little girl stopped and pointed at him and said, "Look mommy, why, why, why is that dog doing that?" and mommy said, "I don't know hon, maybe there's something wrong with it," and I was about to explain that there was nothing wrong with Rocky but I realized that would've been a futile protest as every step he took, his wiener bobbed up and down splattering pee onto the sidewalk, onto the littered Coke can and onto his own feet. As Rocky neared the girl, nosing in for a pat, her mom blurted out "Oh my god, honey, don't touch that dog. You'll get your shoes wet," and she pulled her daughter away to safety.

That embarrassment reminds me also of the woman in the two piece lavender business outfit who raced across the parking lot when she saw me with Stella and Rocky and asked, "Are they friendly?" to which I replied, "Well, Rocky's really friendly but Stella sometimes takes a while to warm up to ..." at which point Stella strolled up to the woman and looked up at her with her most doe-eyed, I'm-an-angel-and-I'm-owned-by-a-heartless-prick expression and the woman of course fawned over her. Rocky noticed this and bounded over and pushed Stella out of the way and just as the woman said "Oh, my" and started to pat Rocky's head, Rocky shuffled and crouched and started to push out a big one.

Usually, he's pretty fast but that time it was like he was trying to push out a bag of concrete and I was like, "Uuuh, sorry about that," and the woman was like, "Oh don't worry about it," and she continued to pet him as we both stood there in silence, smiling politely, watching Rocky take the longest dump of his life.

Rocky finally finished giving birth and as if that was some release signal, the woman said, "You've got two really nice dogs," and she walked away and I looked at Rocky and I was like, "You tard. Why couldn't you wait?" but he was already focused elsewhere, sniffing out the next prime spot to christen.

What was I writing about? Oh yeah, right, spring. Well, they say it's here, officially. Unofficially, it feels like late November. It's still bloody cold. Stella's pissed off and Rocky pissing.