bury me at the dogpark

Not because it's beautiful or that's where I really want my final resting place to be, but because if Annabelle continues with the behavior she's been displaying the last few days, I'm just going to have a heart attack and die there, so to make it easier on those involved, just bury me there. Erect a tiny headstone on which the boys can pee.

Tuesday before the dog park I come home from a great first day of teaching to find trash strewn all about the kitchen, dining room, and living room.

Tuesday at the park: Belly finds a delicious spot on the gravel where some idiotic freakshow spilled Cheerios--who brings Cheerios to a dog park: idiotic freakshows--and would not leave that spot for all the lovins in the world. She snapped at Molly, who wanted in on the breakfast delight. So finally I pulled her away from the spot and did my best to shovel it all up with a random piece of metal. But the girl's on to bigger and better things. She found a baseball. Fine. I would like someday to have a dog who actually chases a ball. But noooooooo. My dog has to lie there for a half hour and chew the damn thing. When I finally decide that's enough, I go to take it from her and she rips the outer layer off and gobbles it down like it's a Thanksgiving turkey. So now I have to monitor her poops to make sure nothing's obstructed.

Wednesday at the dog park: She's a good girl for about a good half hour or so. And then she finds a piece of something that we think was once alive--it was round and reddish and globular and dis. gust. ing. She gobbled that damn thing down before I could even get near her. More worries about her poop. Kelly shows up a few minutes later. We're all walking toward the south end of the park (look at me using directions and shit in a park! I'm from New England!) and we see the two black girls, Molly and Belly, very close to the fence. So close to the fence that, in fact, one of them is on the other side of the fence. Guess which one.

Somehow she'd gotten underneath some netting that was covering up an open spot in the fence. We go over to the fence and she's just standing there, knowing full well we can't get her, chomping on the bones of some dead animal.

At that point I was so mad I thought I was going to cry. I wasn't really worried about her because, as readers of this blog know, Belly's pretty smart and she's pretty attached to me, so she's not going to run too far away. But damn I was mad. Tired of it.

Of course, the end of all this, if you could call it a story, is that I got her pretty easily, she's fine, and she's been an angel ever since. But I'm still carrying a bit of a grudge. She's being a dog. Dogs eat the disgusting remains of other animals.

I wonder if she'd try to dig up my remains at the park. Nan might still bring her there after I'm gone.