When it’s warm outside, we go for a walk after dinner. The whole pack goes… me, the humans, and all three of the Klingons. The way we do it is, one of the humans says “Walk!” and we all get ready.

Did you say walk? Now? It's time?
I get my leash on and we all gather in the side yard. Then we go up the road a little ways and turn left. The Klingons are slow, so we have to wait until they all catch up. Then we go down a hill. We stop and look out across a field to an old house where nobody has lived for a long time.

No. 1 says this is her favorite view of all.
Then the funnest part. We go into the woods! There’s a little path there and we all walk through. I stay on the path but the Klingons take the high roads.

At the end of the path we come out behind a house where there’s never anybody there, and my bestest Klingon goes and rolls and flips in a patch of dust. I really don’t know why she enjoys this but I guess it takes all kinds.
Then it’s a race to the finish. No. 2 goes out ahead and calls the race as the Klingons head toward home. I must say that they do not understand the concept of a race, because they go in fits and starts, and they stop to look behind them all the time.

One time on the way home I walked through a patch of weeds, and they grabbed me! I was stuck! Couldn’t move forward, couldn’t move backward. The humans rescued me from these grabby plants and carried me home. “What a mess!” I heard. They took a long time to pick a whole bunch of little bitty green sticky things out of my coat. I heard No. 1 exclaim, “213!” That was not that much fun.
Woofs,
Willie
[No. 1 here... the "house where where there's never anybody there" is a non-residential frat house down the street from us in Gambier, Ohio, a tiny academic town in central Ohio, home to Kenyon College.
No. 2 and I cherished our walks with Willie and the cats. The neighbors always marveled to see three cats walking with us. In fact, they were known as "The Famous Gambier Walking Cats."]
Posted: September 4th, 2009 under Teenager, The way we do things - 9,186 Comments.