Back Story: Walking the dog

May and her fiancée got a dog. They live over in Fairborn in the Osborne Historic District. One day they were shopping for cat supplies in one of the big chain pet stores in Beavercreek. They happened to go on a Saturday when the store was sponsoring animal adoptions and fell in love with a puppy they found there. If you saw him, you would understand. They now have two cats and one dog. They call the dog Reese´s.

In our household we have a policy against pets. We think of it as a strict policy, although others might view it as somewhat flexible, since we have 12 chickens, a parrotlet and a lovebird. At one time, our son had tropical fish and, when May was still living with us, she had hamsters and gerbils. Maybe the policy reads "no dogs or cats." It´s Amy´s policy. I´ll have to check the fine print.

I forgot to mention that we also have a groundhog, Allen Street Al, who lives under our deck; although, he hardly qualifies as a pet. What he is is a nuisance, tunneling into the chicken run to steal their food and leaving behind a convenient escape route for some of the more adventurous birds. But that´s another story.

Shortly after May and Chris adopted the dog, I got a bright idea. "Let´s borrow your daughter´s dog sometimes and let him loose in the backyard," I told Amy. "Maybe we can trick Al into thinking we have a dog and he will move away." The only reason she agreed was because she had fallen in love with Reese´s the first time she laid eyes on him. I had been counting on that. Surprisingly, May also agreed.

The dog likes it here. He likes to make runs at the fence to Chickenland to scatter the chickens. He has been over a couple times. Whenever Reese´s is here, Al is nowhere to be seen. Whenever the dog is here, no matter what issue is weighing heavily on Amy´s shoulders at the time, she is suddenly euphoric.

Yesterday, May and Chris were going to be out all day. She called to see if we wanted to take the dog. We were happy to do it. She dropped Reese´s at our house while we were out shopping. Normally, a shopping trip with Amy is as endless as a Lewis and Clerk expedition. But on this day, she was clearly in a hurry to get back home to play with the dog.

"Maybe we can take him out for a walk, tonight," she said. "We could use the exercise."

I knew where this was coming from. One day, May and Chris had brought the dog to Yellow Springs and walked him around town. From that one excursion, a half-dozen different people have told us what a special dog our daughter has. Amy wanted to show him off again.

So, once it cooled down a bit, we took him for a walk. We walked the three quarters of a mile down Xenia Avenue from our place at the south end of town to a bench by the Sunrise Café where we stopped to take a rest. Along the way, Reese´s sniffed tree stumps, bushes, animal trails, dog poop and actual dogs. His tail wagged so hard, I thought it was going to fly off.

While we were sitting on the bench at the Sunrise several people stopped to comment on how cute our dog was. Eventually, a couple emerged from the restaurant and looked at Reese´s. "What a pretty face your dog has," the woman said. "I believe that´s the prettiest face I have ever seen on a dog." Amy beamed.

We took Livermore Street on the way back home. Along the way people would look at the dog and smile. A man we encountered stopped to tell us we had a good looking dog. Everyone who knows us knows we don´t have a dog. So, whenever we ran into people we knew we explained to them that this was May´s dog.

Just before we got back to the house, we saw Rodney Bean turning onto Allen Street from Spillan. His window was rolled down and he stopped to say hello. Once again, I felt compelled to explain that this was not our dog.

"You could call this dog sitting," I told him, "or you could call it pet therapy."