Walking the dog

The Rolling Stones version of Rufus Thomas’ classic blues song aside, walking the dog is not what I expected to be doing these days. When Ann left for Ireland, we inherited Kodiak, an eight year old Great Dane/Lab mix. Kathy had been asking me to take their other, younger dog and I kept saying no. When Ann asked us to take Kodiak, how could I refuse?

Now I see our neighborhood from a very different perspective. For years I only experienced it from the inside of a car, rarely walking anywhere. With Kodiak’s required dog maintenance, I see things now that I’ve been missing for so long.

For one thing, there are some very nice people living here! The dog always draws comments, since he is a handsome brute after all, and so I’ve been able to meet a bunch of people that I’d never seen when I was zooming along in my car. There are many older people, but the neighborhood is changing. More younger families are moving in. There are lots of kids now. There are a couple of Polish kids on the block, brothers. I made a point of saying Hi to them and their mom, so we have a friendly zone in front of their house. Just smiling and saying hi seems to dispel any suspicions and create an overarching passageway of friendliness house by house, block by block.

Two blocks over is the Ukranian stronghold. Neatly trimmed yards full of flowers, grammas sitting on porches and boys practicing their skateboard moves. Kodiak makes quite an impression as we walk along. Max lives on that street, so it’s always a treat to head that way.

There are people from church that I see and I never knew where their houses were. There are well kept houses and others that need some serious attention. Once I saw a contractor building a deck on the front of a house and I was so impressed with how he spoke to an elderly woman living in the house, that I asked for his card. We may decide to do the same thing on our house. He lives in the neighborhood. His house is huge, with new siding and skylights—very nice. Another guy had two pallets of patio bricks sitting in his yard since last spring. One day we walked by and saw that he had finally laid them out into a nice backyard space. I remarked on it, congratulating him on his work, as if it were any of my business!

We meet other dog owners and compare notes while our pets stare each other down. We encounter clumps of preteens who ask to pet Kodiak. Great ice breaker. One time he stopped to investigate a fire hydrant and I heard someone pounding on their front window to get us to move along—afraid we would poop on their tree lawn. One time on the Fourth of July, a group of twenty-somethings were blowing off fireworks, but they respectfully waited until we were a safe distance away before continuing, so as not to scare Kodie-Kods.

We also get great exercise, as he races along for the first half mile then gradually slows until he is just plodding along. I wonder how we’ll do in the winter once the snow settles in. Of course, by then, everyone else will be inside, and it won’t matter what anyone’s lawn looks like. All we’ll want to do is poop and scurry back inside. At least I will. Scurry back inside, that is. Not the poop part.