Walking With Fred

Fred loves to go for a walk. I’m sure you’re probably saying to yourself, “what dog doesn’t?” I know Fred is not unique in his feelings about walks. It is that very fun time he gets to go out and catch up on the neighborhood ‘news”. I read somewhere, (I know I've written about this before, sorry for the repeat) that when a dog goes outside and sniffs around, it is similar to us reading the paper. He learns about the current events in his area, get’s to leave a ‘comment’ on said news, and move on to the next story, if you get my drift.  Actually for Fred I think it’s more like giving the article a quick scan, and deciding that the story was his to begin with and needed to be edited…for content.

Fred and I have not been doing very much walking lately, mostly due to the weather, and the Holidays, and whatever the excuse of the day may be for me. My bad.

 "It's cold and crummy out there. I'll be fine right here."

 He always goes with me when I need to run errands, grocery shop and what not. There are a few stores that will let Fred come in with me. Walgreen's (they love him there), Home Depot, stores like that. 

One day before Christmas, I had to go to the mall, 3 stores, and I decided to bring Fred in. I figured the worse they would do was ask us to leave and there weren't any signs saying we couldn't. Well, no one did, and it was so much fun for Fred (sort of). There actually wasn’t anything for him to read, since there hadn’t been anything written before, so he had no need to do any editing (which was a relief to me).  We went into Spencer’s Gifts, I needed to get a tacky birthday card for a friend and Fred was a huge hit in there. From there we went to Bath and Body Works and no one seemed to care. On our ventures through the Mall, there were many children waiting to see Santa so Fred got some attention from the kids, he enjoyed that very much.  At one point, we needed to go upstairs and I realized the escalator was out of the question, I had too many things to carry and I couldn’t hold the handrail and carry him too. So we found an elevator. I pushed the button and we waited, Fred looking up at me wondering why we were staring at a door for no particular reason, then the doors opened up and Fred’s eyes got very big. We walked in, he hesitated at first, but went along. I hit the button and the doors closed. What happened next was nothing short of hilarious. I am pretty sure Fred thought we were having an earthquake or something, because his legs suddenly splayed out beside him, he got as low to the floor as he possibly could and his eyes bugged out (more than usual). 

Poor guy, luckily it was over quickly. Of course, I was laughing hysterically when the doors opened, and Fred v.e.r.y. carefully emerged from what ever that thing was and we went on our way.  He looked back once, maybe twice. I bought whatever it was that I needed to buy upstairs. 

Naturally, we still needed to get to the lower level to get to the car; I decided to take the stairs. That turned out to be a little easier said than done. Fred has no problem getting up and down the stairs here at home, as a matter of fact, it seems to turn in to a race, every time I have the need to go up or down, he has to win, he has to be first. It’s fun. He has his missteps here and there, but we don’t talk about those.

So, there we were at the top of the stairs in front of Sears. These are cement stairs and they have a light colored strip on the edge of each stair, I appreciate that, and it does make them easier to see. However, not for Fred, I question his depth perception, mostly because he can’t catch, and I don’t think he ever looks directly at me, if fact, when he does look at me I am not sure if he’s actually looking at me, his eyes go in different directions, like a lizzard. I guess it is the nature of the breed. I’ve seen some Boston’s that can catch anything at all, Fred just isn’t one of them. So I think when he saw those stairs, he had no idea what he was looking at, an optical illusion of sorts for him. He, very carefully, took a step forward. It was as if he was sticking a toe in the water to test it, and his foot kept going down until it reached the next step, he did this for about 2 or three, probably four stairs, then he got into the rhythm of the steps, and he trotted down, pretty good, a bit unsure, but he was fine. What an ordeal.

I am surprised he even gets into the car with me sometimes. He never knows what kind of and adventure we may go on. It must be weird to be Fred.

I hope everyone  had a nice couple of holidays. Hopefully going forward, I will blog more than I have lately. I just haven't had much to blog about. Maybe writing this will help get me back on track. Thanks so much for stopping by, it means a lot to me. :-)