Shoe In

Today while walking Chandler, we stopped for one his many lawn sniffings. This is where he takes extra time to investigate an area of someone's lawn that has a particularly fine odor. After rooting around with his nose for a few seconds, he made a lunge and pulled a snake out of it's hole, tossing it up into the air. After letting out a scream like a little girl and dragging Chandler away, I went back for a closer look to check it out. First of all, it wasn't a poisonous snake, and secondly, to my relief, he had killed it. Later in the evening I was sitting in my big chair and Chandler came prancing by, all proud of himself, like he had just caught another snake. He didn't, he instead, found one of Mark's weird shoes, and was trying to kill that too.

Mark buys a lot of shoes. He is not Imelda Marcos shoe insane, but I am sure at some point he idolized her shoe collecting skills. I, myself, have four pairs of shoes. One dress pair that I haven't worn in at least two years, one pair for going out around town, another that I use on the infrequent trips to the gym, and finally the pair I use when doing yard work. The last pair also doubles for those times that the possibility of stepping into dog poop is high, like when I walk dogs at the shelter. That last pair is always left outside. Mark on the other hand has a pair of shoes for every mood and event in his life. The problem is that he doesn't take care of them. Instead he tosses them onto the floor of my closet, where they sit in a huge dusty pile. When they aren't in the closet, he leaves them for me to trip over and step on. I just don't get it. No man needs that many shoes.

So when I see Chandler proudly prancing by with Marks shoe in his mouth, my first instinct is to just let him go. In fact I have even considered leaving the closet door open, and telling him they are 'chewy strips'.