Monday, May 10, 2004
Dog Wheelie
C-dog was very bored today while C and I waited for the salesperson at DLX to assemble my very first skateboard – well, bored until someone rode right up to the store entrance. You see, the initial impetus for my buying a skateboard was so that we could help C-dog overcome her skateboard phobia. Whenever skateboarders ride by on the street, C-dog has the instinct to chase after them. When we used to walk her on leash, she would literally pull a wheelie (front paws batting at the air in front of her from about three feet off the ground). I’m not sure if this is why C's sister MC nicknamed her “wheelie,” but the nickname has stuck.
We worked really hard on training C-dog not to chase skateboarders by feeding her treats non-stop the entire time skateboarders are riding by. So now, walking off-leash, she usually responds to the sound of a skateboard by pricking her ears up briefly and then turning towards us to look for the treats. But she still occasionally requires some loud coaxing to draw her attention away from the sound of those small wheels rolling along the concrete jungle of the Lower Haight.
So as soon as I dropped the skateboard on the sidewalk and she heard my fresh wheels riding over the first sidewalk crack I encountered, C-dog's energy amped up 100x what it had been as she’d waited around patiently in the store. We finally figured out what C-dog would do if she ever caught up with a skateboarder – eat the skateboard! The front of my skateboard was immediately baptized in dog saliva.
Her energy was way too high by the time we rode the ten blocks from DLX to Duboce Park. C left us at the dog park to go get her hair done and C-dog must not have noticed her departure. I threw the ball once. C-dog chased after it and then next thing I knew, C-dog was tearing up the pavement making haste to follow C's scent down the street. C was long gone, however. Fortunately, C-dog is well-trained to respond dramatically to the command “Come.”
C-dog was too high strung to play fetch. The combination of the skateboard excitement with C's unexpected departure was simply more than she could handle. She would chase after the balls that I threw for her, but would never bring them back. (This is very unusual for her as she loves to play fetch.) So I quickly gave up and instead skateboarded home, mastering the art of riding while simultaneously feeding her cheese.
When I got home, however, I wasn’t ready to quit riding. I tried to ride in the hallway of our apartment building, but the carpeting was too thick. When I opened our apartment door, however, for the first time, I was excited to see our wood floors with their badly chipping paint. These floors could certainly tell a story of their own – from the chipped pattern where the entry way flooded to the short marks left where C-dog settles in to tooth a jagged bone to the linear marks left by the chair at my desk.
I immediately, rolled the board through the door with my foot and stepped onto it. We have a long, narrow apartment with a very narrow hallway between rooms. It looked perfect of a short ride. The door jams between rooms were only mildly jarring. When I reached the end of the hall and saw our antique glass china cabinet just inches ahead, I panicked. I don’t think you can call it “scrubbing” when you wipe out onto a hardwood floor. Somehow the vision of skin abraded with bits of gravel fits the term more appropriately. But in any case, I left a nice, new, wide, curving mark in our painted wooden floors. I like to think of it as a mischievous smile – marking the floor to commemorate my newfound freedom on wheels.
We worked really hard on training C-dog not to chase skateboarders by feeding her treats non-stop the entire time skateboarders are riding by. So now, walking off-leash, she usually responds to the sound of a skateboard by pricking her ears up briefly and then turning towards us to look for the treats. But she still occasionally requires some loud coaxing to draw her attention away from the sound of those small wheels rolling along the concrete jungle of the Lower Haight.
So as soon as I dropped the skateboard on the sidewalk and she heard my fresh wheels riding over the first sidewalk crack I encountered, C-dog's energy amped up 100x what it had been as she’d waited around patiently in the store. We finally figured out what C-dog would do if she ever caught up with a skateboarder – eat the skateboard! The front of my skateboard was immediately baptized in dog saliva.
Her energy was way too high by the time we rode the ten blocks from DLX to Duboce Park. C left us at the dog park to go get her hair done and C-dog must not have noticed her departure. I threw the ball once. C-dog chased after it and then next thing I knew, C-dog was tearing up the pavement making haste to follow C's scent down the street. C was long gone, however. Fortunately, C-dog is well-trained to respond dramatically to the command “Come.”
C-dog was too high strung to play fetch. The combination of the skateboard excitement with C's unexpected departure was simply more than she could handle. She would chase after the balls that I threw for her, but would never bring them back. (This is very unusual for her as she loves to play fetch.) So I quickly gave up and instead skateboarded home, mastering the art of riding while simultaneously feeding her cheese.
When I got home, however, I wasn’t ready to quit riding. I tried to ride in the hallway of our apartment building, but the carpeting was too thick. When I opened our apartment door, however, for the first time, I was excited to see our wood floors with their badly chipping paint. These floors could certainly tell a story of their own – from the chipped pattern where the entry way flooded to the short marks left where C-dog settles in to tooth a jagged bone to the linear marks left by the chair at my desk.
I immediately, rolled the board through the door with my foot and stepped onto it. We have a long, narrow apartment with a very narrow hallway between rooms. It looked perfect of a short ride. The door jams between rooms were only mildly jarring. When I reached the end of the hall and saw our antique glass china cabinet just inches ahead, I panicked. I don’t think you can call it “scrubbing” when you wipe out onto a hardwood floor. Somehow the vision of skin abraded with bits of gravel fits the term more appropriately. But in any case, I left a nice, new, wide, curving mark in our painted wooden floors. I like to think of it as a mischievous smile – marking the floor to commemorate my newfound freedom on wheels.
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