Start with elderly & somewhat senile poodle who can see a bit by day but almost nothing by night, is also deaf, has been having some digestive issues in the last day or two, & is on hunger strike because engineer has bopped off to Maryland for the weekend & she is miffed at being stuck with just me. Add human with ADD & night blindness (post-LASIK a few years back).
I collect keys, phone (on second try), & dogwalking bag (plastic bags, paper towels, treats), & get poodle into her soft harness. Poodle has choking fit (bad heart) & nearly collapses, then balks at elevator; eventually she gives in. Any sort of steps are out of the question, so the front lobby's out; instead we go out the basement, through the building garden. For the sake of the hall floors -- she has already soaked the paper setup but is on diuretics & is all too open-minded about where to pee -- I scoop her up & carry her until we are safely out the door.
Someone on the board with a fetish for green living (or more likely someone from the management company with a dislike for electric bills & buying replacement bulbs) has installed a light with a motion sensor at each of the back garden doors. It comes on just fine. Unfortunately, garbage pickup day is tomorrow & there are impressive hedgerows of garbage & recycling bags between us & the gate. Stinky garbage & recycling. Poodle is entranced by the bags & stops to get a better whiff. We take so long to get to the gate that the motion sensor despairs of us & switches off the light.
Score one.
Poodle was at one time trained to heel on my left (due to an insane fantasy I once had about obedience competition). Engineer, however, comes from the school of radical permissiveness & poodle has gotten into Bad Habits. Consequently, as I try to find the gate latch so that we can get to the sidewalk, which already seems a bit mirage-like, poodle goes into Human Maypole mode, wrapping the leash around my legs. I do not fall on her because I land on the iron fence instead, hitting the gate latch with my elbow, & we disentangle & topple out, one of us swearing & the other making a beeline for the nearest tree/area of dirt.
Score three: bruised elbow, Maypole, swearing already though only in preliminary stages of walk.
Diuretics have kicked in & some of the neighborhood dogs have preceded her at the tree, so she spends a good while marking, sniffing, marking again, & finally wandering aimlessly in a circle, having forgotten exactly why she is there. Nothing further is forthcoming, so to speak, so I haul her off down the sidewalk.
Score one: canine dementia.
Other building supers have gotten a jump on garbage day & the kerb side is lined with mountains of garbage bags. At least one streetlight is burned out. Someone has failed to pick up after a very large dog.
Score one or more: terrain.
It's a lovely night & everyone's out. We have to wait for, or get out of the way of:
very large man yelling on phone ("Suzy, Jesus Christ, have a fucking heart -- well, if you HAD a heart, which you don't ...");
elderly man talking to himself;
elderly couple arguing;
group of lively drunk hipsters -- there goes the neighborhood -- who are having trouble walking & texting at once;
oblivious girl plugged into iPod.
Finally we get to a large cross-street with fewer garbage bags & better lighting but new pedestrian challenges:
idiot on bicycle on sidewalk, going in circles to keep pace with his equally idiotic buddy, who is fiddling with his phone;
neighborhood deranged can collector/trash picker dragging a train of three shopping carts tied together & covered with garbage bags; he's had a good night & they are piled high, plus he's off his meds & having a chat with his demons (could be on phone, I suppose -- didn't look for Bluetooth);
corporate dork in ugly suit with briefcase & BlackBerry, in use;
shop employee unloading van;
another carrying boxes down to basement via opened stairs, into which poodle shows every intention of falling;
trees surrounded by rather nice floral planting & cast-iron low fence -- poodle almost slips through twice & has to be dragged away;
double-parked cars that poodle believes may contain engineer.
At this point, in fact, she has decided that engineer is out here someplace & fights to stop & investigate all possibilities -- groups of people, trucks, doorways. She pulls hard enough that the Velcro on part of her harness gives way & has to be re-fastened.
I have given up keeping score & am concentrating on keeping temper, not very successfully. We have taken over 20 minutes to get halfway around the block.
We round the corner & here comes the prizewinning family of the night: three adults, one dawdling toddler who shrieks at sight of poodle, one stroller (occupied by another screamer), one small boy on scooter, & one teenager who is lagging behind & texting. Unfortunately, we meet them & must get out of their way just where the gas company has
Poodle attempts to pee on sidewalk. No, I don't care if someone else peed there, you aren't. If Dylan the Labradoodle jumped off the Empire State Building, would you ... wait, I'm speaking out loud. Poodle wouldn't be listening even if she weren't deaf; she is now trying to get into another car. While she's towed away to the nearest patch of dirt, we nearly crash into young couple saying an extensive goodnight in the shadows. Neither of them is the engineer, but she has to make sure.
Poodle trips over irregular portion of sidewalk. So do I. Woman with shopping cart full of laundry is not pleased at my language. Stick around, honey, I'm just getting warmed up.
We make it to the front of the building, finally. Fit of optimism causes me to stop & check for mail. Steps leading from lobby to elevator are still there -- imagine that -- so we go back out the front door, as I cannot carry poodle, dogwalking bag, & the mail at once. She is not cooperative about getting through the double doors.
Eventually we get around the building again to the garden door (no steps, just a ramp to the basement entrance), & poodle declines to have a final pee at the hydrant before we go in. As soon as we are in the apartment & I remove her harness, she trots off to her paper setup & pees copiously, then walks in it. I catch her before she gets to the rug & clean pee pawprints off the wood floor for the fifth time today.
Now it's just a matter of squashing her evening meds into a Pill Pocket (a reeking blob of livery glup whose taste she so enjoys that she doesn't even bother to spit out her pills, as any good poodle would). Pill Pockets are an exception to the hunger strike, so far. (Much as I enjoy solitude, engineer needs to hurry back up here. For one thing, he has almost no sense of smell & likes liver anyhow, so he gets most Pill Pocket duty.)
Poodle curls up on one of the many dog beds scattered around the apartment & looks impossibly cute. Never mind, well worth it then.
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