The walk

Firstly don’t think for a moment I don’t walk my dog. I do, just not at the moment (except weekends). It is the middle of winter and wild horses couldn’t drag me out of bed before 7.30am for work (and it is also kinda dark still) and when I get home from work around 5.30 – 6pm it is dark once again.

So where is this going? Well a month ago or so I had a day off from work (to sit one of my Uni exams actually – irrelevant but thought I’d slip it in) and the exam finished at 4pm. So here I have a beautiful day, if not a little cold, plenty of light left in it and Gluteus Maximus – Max for short and I decide to take a walk (well alright, I decided but he wanted to come, really, really bad!). I’ve scoped out the neighbourhood, I have ridden my bike around so I have a rough idea of where to go, so we embark on a new route and a new adventure.

Well, I get to the top of the hill in my street (I am also wearing my walkman, makes me a total snob as I don’t hear what anyone says to me and therefore I ignore them – I don’t do it on purpose I just (honestly) can’t hear them). But this time avoidance is impossible, a lady, comes straight up to me mouthing some incoherent words as I am still singing along to the musical styling of whatever cd was in my walkman at the time. I realise that she is talking to me, yes me. I pull out one of the earphones and say:

“Yeah, hi.” I am just a pleasure to meet.

“Oh hello, it’s good to see you taking Max for a walk.”

“Excuse me?!?” I am by now thinking how the hell does she know his name? Slight panic grips me and I also make a mental note NEVER to shout out the window at him again when he barks, saying something along the lines of “Shut up Max!”(or usually something quite a bit worse). Also the implication I don’t walk him, well lady we are not all retired with all day to play you know!

“So, how do you know his name?” I asked, with great curiosity. I am waiting for it.

“Oh, well it’s on the tag on his collar” Oh the revelation, how do you think it got there lady, yep that’s right I, his owner, bought it for him, so I am aware it’s there, still not fully answering the question though. So I wait…

“Oh and as I live across the road from you in the (add description of your choice here) house, I see him though your fence and I go up and pat him and say hello, I take my grandkids over to visit him too and my daughter sometimes says hi and pats him.

Jesus lady, get your own dog. By now I am a little pissed, for a bit of background Max is a Golden Retriever, he is the most docile dog on the planet and he looks like a little Golden Bear, very cute. He barks when people walk past the house (at night) and would smother anyone with affection if they were to crossover into his domain. But she doesn’t know that and I am pissed because she has been trespassing, on a somewhat regular basis to say hello to my dog. Unjustified in my pissedoffedness, maybe but here is why I am pissed at this situation.

Firstly she walks through my front yard past the house to the back fence, reaches through the fence to pat my dog. Now if my dog was to, oh I don’t know, bite that bitch all of a sudden it would become my problem. She, if she chose to could press charges against me or sue me and I would be ordered to put Max down as a dangerous dog (this thought does not please me). My recourse against her, basically nothing, trespass perhaps.

Now I would never, I repeat never go up to a foreign dog, who incidentally is behind a fence in someones back yard, no matter what bred, to pat them, never. I am pissed she would do this to me. I can’t do anything about it as I am at work in the day and I can’t stop her. I didn’t want to be a rude bitch by telling her to stay the fuck off my property although I wanted to, as she does after all live just across the road, and as she is retired can keep her beady little eyes on my house and stop those nasty burglars from stealing my shit (she is after all a constant visitor apparently anyhow).

So there you have it, my stalemate with the neighbour. I do hope one day Max tries to take a piece of her, although it’s very unlikely, as he is now familiar with her as she has visited so often. It still makes me mad though.

Oh and the walk? She talked to me for half and hour before finally letting us go. Max and I walked for another hour and when we got home it was dark. So much for our daylight romp!