Soft Serve

Monday, dog walking day at Abandoned Pet Rescue. My knees hurt, my bad eyesight has given me a permanent headache, and I just don't feel like walking a bunch of orphan dogs through a poop strewn field next to the train tracks. Unfortunately for the dogs, they have no choice in the matter. If I don't show up to walk them, they might not get walked. So I suck it up and do my duty. Speaking of duty, for some reason every single dog I walked yesterday had diarrhea. It is quite disgusting standing there with a poop bag on my hand, ready for the cleanup, and watching a dog squirt yesterday's dinner into the grass. What I do in this case, is bend over the puddle of poo and make a quick sweep grabbing bits of grass and a little dirt. It looks like I've done my job, and I don't have to actually touch the mess. It isn't just cleaning up after the dogs that had me down yesterday. I also had my problems getting them ready for the walk. One in particular took me five minutes to get a harness on. Every time I got one leg through the damn thing she'd jump up at me. She had crazy eyes that seemed to be pleading with me to get her out of there, and I don't mean just for a quick walk and a poop. When I was on my fifth dog, things changed. She was a stray that had been taken in just the day before. This dog was a lover. At one point I stopped and sat down in the grass (Making sure it wasn't a spot I had walked another dog over earlier). She pressed up against me, gave me a quick kiss, and then lay down across my lap. I had fallen in love again. Again I wanted to take another dog home with me. I quickly put that idea out of my head and we continued our walk. Yes, she did stop on the way back to the shelter to take a dump. Yes, it was a sloppy mess. It didn't matter, I was fine with it and cleaned it all up.