I Do Not Walk My Dog

 

 

 

I do not walk my dog

my dog does not walk

she twists and turns

every butterfly does she stalk

runs too and fro

she smells every bush every tree

she wraps my legs in her leash

my dog walks me

 

My dog, “Baby” (her name was supposed to be Cha Cha but she was so tiny and was in threat of “the desert or the dump” by a man who had a bunch of puppies at the Tractor Supply in Yuma.  The bitch had died and left all these puppies who did not even have their eyes open yet, could not drink milk, were very tiny). I got in my car, then had to go back and get the one that was the different one.  I gave him fifty dollars to feed the rest and took the tiny puppy back to the motorhome.  I had to eyedropper her milk every hour during the first few nights.  If I put her down, I was always saying “Don’t step on the Baby…where’s the baby” when she would wriggle out of the blanket I had near the heating vents.  So, she became “Baby” and will still claw her way up into my neck area for comfort or to comfort me… and, of course, she is no longer a baby…she is a fat Chihuahua-Terrier mix.

 

I have never had a dog that all mine.  She is totally mine and sleeps in the curve of my knees every night, or, if I wriggle around in my sleep, crawls to the bottom of my feet and then stretches out so I cannot stretch out .  She grumbles if I wake her by changing positions in the night. 

But, I cannot walk her.  It is ridiculous how intent she is and how closely she has to examine EVERYDANGEDBLADEOFGRASSINTHEDITCHES. 

 

She reminds me to make sense of my own world and pay attention to the small things we tend to overlook in our rush to ‘walkandgettherefast’.

 

©Carol Desjarlais 3.123.21

**commissioned painting of a relative’s dog, Poppy.