Measuring Danger

Living in the city as I do, I am not unaware of certain “dangers” as I go throughout my day.  I’m always alert about passers-by when I walk Dorothy at night, for example; I have my key ready for a quick entrance into my apartment building; much though it pains me to do so, I don’t insist on “pedestrians having the right of way” [which THEY DO!!] when bullying vehicles turn left or right; etc.

And living in the city as she does, Miss Dorothy is also not unaware of certain dangers:  she doesn’t like a truck to make a hissing noise as it pulls up to park; she is wary of people who sneeze when they pass her; she is suspicious when people pause outside of our front door; she understands the potential danger of a hippo snorting in a documentary on the TV; etc.  And then there is her arch nemesis….the Tape Measure.

Dorothy hates this tape measure in particular, and any retracting tape measure in general.  Has a certain parent augmented this hate by teasing her with the tape measure?  Yes, yes he has.  And has a certain other parent been innocently knitting and then, upon needing to measure her progress, used the tape measure and all of a sudden been beset upon by an angry bulldogge ball of fury who materialized into her lap out of nowhere to attack said measuring device?  Yes, yes she has.  Just saying.

I now know to open the tape measure as quietly and as calmly as possible.  If Dorothy is sleeping, she will still open her eyes when I do this and won’t relax again until I put the instrument of evil down, but at least I can thwart her from having to wrest it out of my hand.

The other day, however, the couple who is going to be moving into my apartment when I move out of it stopped by with my landlord to measure my apartment.  Do you see where this is going?  My landlord was telling me a story, when out of the corner of my eye I saw the couple take a tape measure out of a pocket and start measuring my living room.  Oh dear.  Of course, Dorothy went berserk and I had to try to explain that my bulldogge did not like tape measurers.

She then proceeded to follow them into all the rooms so that she could keep trying to get between them and the evil retracting device—as any good hostess should.  It was all rather fraught!

Dorothy thinking, really what is wrong with using a simple yardstick?

Monkey In My Mouth

Nothing pleases Dorothy more than to find a treasure in the park.  She gets happy if the treasure is but a fine stick; but if the treasure is a stinky old ball, or some sort of dog or child’s toy, well then! – her glee and amazement know no bounds.

Yesterday she went to the park with her father and returned quite quickly.  Usually they will do three or four turns around the park, but this time she found a squeaky monkey on a park bench and so had to bring it home, STAT.

After giving it a rinse, we let her enjoy the monkey and make it squeak for a good hour or so.  But we took it away when she removed its rubber monkey tail from its rubber monkey body.

You can be sure that Dorothy will be checking the particular bench on which she found the monkey each time we go to the park from here on in.  Who knows what will be there next?!

Dorothy thinking, this is MY monkey; it is not YOUR monkey.

Rockin' Robin

One of the signs of spring in this part of the world is a robin hopping on lawn.  But apparently, our Dorothy is not sentimental when it comes to the changing of the seasons.  Yesterday, when in the park on a sunny afternoon in the seventies, Dorothy spotted a plump robin doing robin-y things, and went all jungle on us.  I wasn’t there to witness this spectacle – alas! – but I’m told that when Dorothy spied the robin over yonder, she moved her body an inch or two lower to the ground and began to stalk the robin, paw over paw, getting closer and closer, like a cartoon predator, until all of a sudden she couldn’t take the suspense and charged at the bird.

It turns out there was one little hitch to her stealthiness, and that was that while doing all the sneaking, she was still in full bulldogge breathing mode—i.e. grunting and snuffling and making a lot of nasal noises.  The robin, therefore, was not in any danger of meeting its demise.  But the story made me laugh and I can just picture Dorothy getting all Mighty Huntress in the middle of Center City.

I actually sympathize with the robin a bit, being the victim myself of a dog stalking on several occasions.  My friend’s Doberman, Manda, used to enjoy a bit of stalking while out in her yard in New Hampshire.  Her prey of choice?  Humans.  I’d be outside admiring the garden when I’d feel the hair rise on my neck and look over and see Manda half a football field away, her eyes locked on me, her legs moving forward in studied slow motion, getting closer and closer and closer.  Now Manda was a gentle, friendly beast, so I knew she would never do anything to me.  But there is something primal about being stalked that is unsettling, to say the very least.  There she’d be:  a Doberman lion on the Serengeti; and there I’d be:  a gazelle with an unfortunate economy of motion.  I was always a little relieved when the game ended and I was still upright.

Dorothy’s mother, I am told, is a stellar frog hunter, so hunting is in Dorothy’s genes.  Surprisingly, Dorothy will walk past a pigeon without giving it a second glance though, so there must be something about robins she does not like.  Perhaps she’s pro-earthworm?

Dorothy thinking, I didn’t like its beady little eye looking at me.

Rats in Rittenhouse Square

"Does Dorothy have a prey drive?" you may ask.

Yes, yes she does.  I answered this in the affirmative to myself the other day as Dorothy was flying me like a kite.  She was zooming after a rat she spotted in the park at 9:00 pm and was pulling me with such strength and such speed, that I was sure that I would soon be flying out behind her like a horizontal Mary Poppins.  Turns out Bulldogge is STRONG.

I don't know what was going on in the park that night.  I have seen the occasional rat there before, but always on an evening when it was 95 degrees out even late at night, and I always assumed they were out looking for water and refreshment, something in the slurpee family mayhap.  But this night was a cold one.

"Do rats hibernate?" I mused as Dorothy spotted another rat in a tangle of rose bushes and tried to pull me behind her into the thorny thicket.  For if they do, maybe this was their last hurrah before slumber, a kind of rat rumspringa.

An alternative idea was that perhaps rat poison had recently been distributed throughout the park and these rats were all woozy from hemlock.

At any rate, I realized that Dorothy has perhaps inherited her mother Nancy's penchant for hunting and catching frogs, only being a city bulldogge, her prey of necessity was varmint.

I also realized that night that it was a very good thing I had looped her leash twice around my wrist.

Dorothy being walked by a park denizen in an empty fountain,

sniffing for Templeton: