Every winter here in Ohio, as the temperature hovers around 20 degrees and the snow falls, I tell my husband we are going to fence in the back yard for the dogs. It grows old, putting on a light jacket heavy winter coat, scarf, heavy gloves, hat and boots just to take the dogs out, especially when one of them seems to suffer from irritable bowel syndrome, or at least he thinks he does. More than likely, he just likes to watch me go through the routine of bundling up in all of those clothes just so he can go outside and, along with the other two, try to pull me down while I'm treading on slippery ground, and turn me into a 130 lb human snowman (or snowwoman as the case may be). Their favorite trick is to try and take off after a deer that likes to show up on occasion and cross the road. I swear, these deer have a sense of humor. They must know that deer crossing road = dogs that will chase = pulling human to ground.Even during the summer, walking 3 pugs is always a treat. For some reason, Maggie always feels like she has to walk around behind me so her leash is tangled behind my legs. No matter how many times I step over her leash, she walks around behind me again, almost like she suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder. As if they can sense that I'm already tangled around one leash, Bumper and Toby decide they're going to start running around each other, in front and back of my legs as if I'm a maypole. About this time, I have to yell "Stop!", which only works a fraction of the time, so I can bend over and untangle myself. My neighbors have hilly yards right by the street where I walk and I've tumbled down those hills a time or two. I can imagine my neighbors sitting in their houses howling with laughter. All I can think is thank God I work for a group of15 podiatrists. I'm gonna need them to repair the tendon I'm bound to rupture in my ankle.
Toby, for some reason, has decided he likes to chase cars. Maybe it's because it's something that actually "runs" away from him and he's getting his revenge for all the times Maggie has taken his chewies (while he's working on them) and bullied him. Poor Bumper gets the brunt of this, as it usually happens when he's hunched over doing one of his famous "three-legged poops". Bumps usually ends up getting yanked out of his pooping position with a nugget still hanging out of his behind while Toby is trying to take off after the car and I'm trying to give Toby a leash correction while sternly saying "no chase".
My wrists are getting beat up from all the yanking, pulling, etc. that happens during our frequent walks. Various parts of my body get sore from the falls. I worry that one of these days Toby will break out of his harness and actually catch one of those cars that he covets. And Maggie, almost 2, still poops in the house. I swear, sometimes she looks up at me as if to say "Let's hurry up and get back into the house. I have to poop".
Yep, this summer we're going to fence in that yard, if I have to pick up a second or third job to pay for it.
