Our neighborhood has a little grocery store within walking distance. To get to it, you walk to the fire station, which backs up on it, and cross a small concrete ramp across some grass. One of the advantages of this route is that it takes you along the back and side of the grocery store where you can find nice pieces of rusted metal. But my love of rusted metal is another story. This really is the easiest way to get to the grocery store.
At first I was nervous about using this route because I was worried about getting in the way of the fire fighters if they ever have to leave suddenly. Then I realized that they would probably be using the main driveway that leads straight out of their fire house, not the side drive where we walk. Oh right! And of course, now that we've been in the neighborhood for several months, I see people on this side driveway just about every time we use it. On this occasion we were lucky enough to meet a person with a dog.
We had just had a big rain and TyTy had his puddle-jumping boots on. He also had his puddle-jumping attitude on and when we spotted the dog he was ready to run. I reminded him of the rules about dogs and he walked. I also reminded him of his opening line: "Excuse me sir, can I pet your dog?" In addition to a dog on a leash, this particular pet owner also carried a tumbler of some yellowish liquid, on the rocks. A square paper napkin, like you'd use at a picnic, was plastered around the outside of the tumbler to protect his hand from condensation. I don't know what the liquid was but such a sight is not uncommon in south Louisiana and I have to say, when I saw it, I got a warm fuzzy feeling. Suddenly I was reminded of The Dude; I wonder if his penchant for carrying beverages around is one of the reasons I instantly loved that character.
"Excuse me sir, can I pet your dog?"
"Sure...but he might not stay put too long, he's completely blind."
Wow, Dog #15, Eiko, our first blind dog. Eiko is blind from diabetes, which also plagues several of his other body systems. His owner, who introduced himself as Otto (the first of our random dog owners to introduce himself at all), told us all about Eiko and his recently departed brother, Bismark. They were purchased from a breeder of White Shepherds. I had never heard of a White Shepherd; Eiko certainly was whitish, but mostly he was more tawny. I thought he was beautiful, even if he wasn't pure white anymore. Otto told us that when he lost his sight, the vet had looked into transplants but apparently Eiko's sockets had deteriorated as well, and would not hold up to the surgery. Bismark had had myriad health problems, starting with a leg amputation from cancer at the age of three. Apparently their breeder was none too careful about inbreeding, or at least, that was Otto's reasoning. In reading up on White Shepherds, I can see how that would happen. The white phenotype comes from a puppy having homozygous recessive genes for white fur, which is a shot in the dark, unless you have two parents who carry homozygous recessive genes themselves. But not all White Shepherds have the homozygous recessive gene pair; sometimes the recessive gene trumps the dominant gene, and you can't tell until you breed an animal. I can see how this would be a crap shoot for breeders, and how if they found parents with homozygous recessive white genes, they might be tempted to over-breed them. Stuff like this is just another reason I have always preferred my dogs to be mixed and from the pound.
We stood in the driveway behind the fire station for at least ten or fifteen minutes, talking about dogs and other stuff. As was usual, the dog owner did most of the talking, so in addition to the health and history of Eiko and Bismark, we also learned about his new puppy, a White Shepherd from Oklahoma and a couple of stray cats that he and his wife have adopted. But he also asked about us, wanted to know where my husband and I were from, where we lived, stuff like that. He knew someone on our street. By that time TyTy was getting antsy, and we had not yet made dinner so we bid Otto and Eiko farewell, but not before we were promised an invitation to the next neighborhood crawfish boil and also to their next tailgating party at LSU. I love this neighborhood.
On the way home we saw an older man with a Pekingese. He appeared to see us too, because he crossed the street to get to the opposite side. Undaunted, TyTy and I set our course for intercept while my husband flanked him. I started to warn TyTy about the sometimes temperamental natures of small dogs when, to my utter surprise, the man dropped the leash and said to his dog, "Go 'head on! I know you want to see him!" TyTy and the dog converged with much petting and face-licking.
"She just loves kids! Even babies! Look at that." The owner smiled beatifically at his dog and my son. Then the dog saw my husband and ran to him. "I tell you, she's never met a stranger!" Her owner said proudly. Dog #16's name was PI, as in Private Investigator, not 3.14. I was only a tad disappointed. She was incredibly cute. PI reminded me of the statue in that old William Powell movie, "Life with Father;" she looked just like it, as if that statue had come alive.
Fortunately for TyTy, this dog owner was friendly but not talkative. We got our picture and made our way back to the house. These two dogs came after a dry spell of several days; partly that was due to the weather forcing us to stay indoors and partly it was because we are doubling up on schoolwork in preparation for an extended spring break. While in class we often see people walking dogs on the sidewalk in front of our house, but I let them go. We could run out into the street and hail them down, but that would be a little weird, and I don't want to mark my child and myself as more weird than we already are. The joy of this project for me is the randomness of our meetings with dogs and their owners, and I never want to force these meetings. Walking in our neighborhood, hanging out with friends and their dogs, these are and should be our main sources of dog meetings. Otherwise it becomes a grocery list.
So that is why I'm enjoying this project, because my whole life I've been a collector of random items and images. But I'm also enjoying my son's response. The joy of this project for TyTy is that he gets to meet 100 dogs.
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