8:45 a.m. - 2008-01-07
adventures in dog walking
Well, Steelers season has come to an end so I needed a new hobby. This weekend I took the two day training to become a dog walker for the Animal Rescue League. Sunday I completed my training and finished the day by walking a couple of doggies. They paired us up for our first time out and pretty much everyone else in the training was 1/2 of a male/female hippy dippy boyfriend/girlfriend pair (probably a result of Newy Year's resolutions..."Honey. let's do something good for the community together, that will be sooooo cute!")so I got matched by default with a very nice Americorp volunteer. I am sure everyone probably thought we were a lesbian couple, but whatever. She was fine, except not really. She was horrible! Like, I don't think she had ever seen a dog in her life. She was afraid of them and really timid, and so as she was trying most unsuccessfully to get into the dog pen to put a leash on Rocky, a sweet very young boxer mix, we kept getting these lectures from the volunteer coordinator. I was feeling so annoyed that I was now associated with The Girl Who is Afraid of Dogs because i didn't sign up to be partners with anyone, let alone someone who needed the remedial class. Everyone else already had their dogs and were outside walking while we were getting this lecture from one of the crazy veteran adoption assistant who probably has 27 dogs and 39 cats at home.
But now I am trained and can go by myself whenever I want so that is cool. I got to walk Rocky and Trixie, this tiny, nervous old miniature doberman who had her toenails painted purple. I feel bad because either her owner suddenly died after painting Trixie's nails a shocking purple color and the family members just dropped poor old Trixie off at the shelter, or her owner just decided she didn't want her anymore. (IT says on the chart clipped to their cage how they ended up there and this one said, like many of them do, "Owner Surrender." Maybe they had a fight over the purple nail polish.
