Biloxi Blues

For those of you who have read my previous postings here, or know me at all, you are well aware I have many talents, however one of them is not grace. To give you an example of the early onset of this awkward behavior, my mother gave me the option when I was young to go into ballet or gymnastics. When the choice was presented, I could read in her eyes the clear signal with which would be the wisest choice. Plus, ballet is stupid. With that forewarning, you also need to embrace the fact that this is apparent in every and all activities in my daily life. Yesterday, I decided to take my dog hiking with me. To give you a background on Biloxi, she is a rescue that we adopted who spent the entire first 4.5 years of her life stuffed in a kennel. Her legs were very atrophied when found and it has taken quite some time to get her strength up to par, as well as her shyness. She is very timid and meek (not surprising) and usually spends her days on Noah's bed because whether it was right or not, she feels safest and most comfortable in a sectioned off area. However, Biloxi loves walks and lately she's been accompanying me to the mountain for my regular hikes and has done incredible with yanking me swiftly along the trail. Yesterday was no exception, however I wanted to take her for a longer walk than my usual 2.5 miles, so I chose the 4 mile intermediate hike. Once on the trail I realized it was much too chilly for my usual tank top apparel and I found it difficult to get my ice cubed feet to move along at a steady pace. Coincidentally, I kept tripping until finally the terrain won and I fell chest first into the muddy trail. Knocked the breath out of me a bit, and I scared the tar out of my pansy dog with the collision into the ground. She reacted by darting forward with all of her might to flee from her clumsy owner, which resulted in my arm nearly forsaking its socket. I got up and brushed myself off a bit looked around to see if I needed to do a curtsey for any fellow hikers that may have been audience to my sudden descent. All clear, so we were off. Loxi was quickly making friends with fellow dogs, and only occasionally getting her hackles up as if her tiny self was frightening in any sense of the word. She was getting comfortable with her surroundings and sniffing any interesting bushes and peeing all over everything with a surface. Up ahead I could see a pretty serious looking jogger coming our way and anticipating his swift arrival I pulled Loxi closer to me to give him room on the petite trail. Suddenly, out of nowhere, as if she was possessed by the gods of fearlessness, Loxi darted to the left of me to sniff a bare looking bush that apparently so enraptured her attention she couldn't wait one more second to whiff it's scent. Unfortunately this was perfect timing to pull the leash taut and perfect angle to trip the unsuspecting jogger before he had a moment to slow down and dodge the catastrophe. Loxi was strangled, I was one step closer to being armless and we had a very pissed off jogger peering at us after managing to catch himself. I felt somewhat as if I was in a cartoon with how perfectly that whole scenario played out. I apologized profusely and Loxi wet herself in fear, and yet he was still quite perturbed as if woman and dog had banded together in a sudden evil scheme to make him look foolish. Muttering something about her being a rescue (as if this explains away her clotheslin-ing nimbleness) and turning around abruptly we continued on down the mountain. Deep in thought I realized my dog and I could be a force to be reckoned with for any person approaching us, we just simply have to get our timing right. I am working on a command that will suddenly make her race away from me and hold her ground. I'm pretty sure "Kennel!!" will administer the desired effect. ;)