Thursday, January 19, 2006
The Morning Walk
WORKING: How's it going?
WORKING: er... are you there?
WORKING: helloooo
TREV: sorry, my mousepad thing is sluggish
WORKING: Okay, so my story involves, of course, the morning walk.
TREV: go for it
WORKING: So the first part of the walk is good. We stop at Withrow for a bit but Percy just stands there barking because I didn’t bring the ball. I decide to spare everyone's ears and move on to Riverdale.
So we get to Riverdale and head down into the valley and come up behind these two big, black, standard poodles. One of them wants to push Charlie around and for some reason Percy gets in on it. Poor Charlie nearly gets her ass kicked. I try to break it up a bit to prevent it from getting serious, but then we get to this wide-open space with all the tall, dead grass and brambles. It's really Charlie's domain. They can't catch her. She's like a bloody jackrabbit (not that they don't try).
We pull away from the two poodles and carry on at a good clip until we get to the Bloor viaduct and then we turn around and make our way back. At the stairs leading up to the pedestrian bridge over the DVP, I call the dogs to me. They'd been chasing each other like crazy and my last sight of Charlie was her ass going over the embankment to the river. She does this all the time. Usually she comes shooting back out right away. Usually.
Percy's with me but he's looking back at the river and stalling. I'm calling, "Charlie come! Chaaaarlie, come!" But she seems to be ignoring me. I start to head up, knowing that wherever she is, she can probably hear me climbing the metal stairs and she won’t be able to resist catching up. Only Percy is frozen, staring towards the river.
I rip my headphones out of my ears and listen for a second and I can't hear a thing. No nails on pavement, no crashing through the bushes, no splashing. Normally this translates to "Charlie's probably smelling something gross," but with Percy looking so strange, I just know something is wrong.
So I run down the stairs to the embankment, Percy right on my heels. And there's Charlie, almost completely submerged, clinging to a small cut in the embankment. She is straining to get out but it's too steep and slippery and the water is too deep. She can't get leverage. I try to get her to let go and swim upstream to an easier place but she's too scared.
So I get down on my ass, slide down the embankment and dig my heels into the side, grabbing onto some weeds, which are not anchored very well. I lean as far down as I can and urge Charlie to jump, knowing that if I can just get hold of her collar I can pull her up. But she just can't get high enough and I can't get low enough.
I think she also realizes this isn't going to work. Because when Percy and I try another tactic and follow the bank down river a few yards, it isn't hard to entice her to let go. She lets the water carry her down to a much easier spot where she pulls herself out, shakes herself off, and gives me a look like she's found Jesus. Meanwhile, my heart starts to beat again. Percy herds us back home.
WORKING: And that's the end of my story.
TREV: holy shit...
TREV: that's a story.
posted by Working From Home Today
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