My Puppy Epiphany (and a Polish Daydream)

I am puppy-sitting this month and, as a puppy-sitter, I have two responsibilities: feed the dog and take the dog outside so it can do its doggy business. (This is the point in the post where we ignore the logical reasoning that if I took a little break from the first responsibility, I wouldn't have to worry about the second. We are ignoring that logical reasoning because there is a good chance the dog's owner is checking this blog and would have no moral or ethical issues with hiring a large polish hit man to kill me in my sleep if I even hinted that I was thinking of mistreating her angel.)

Because said dog has to spend the bulk of her time indoors, I try to take her on several walks each day. (Oh, wait, back to Liz hiring that polish hit man to kill me...I've decided his name should Erasmo Skotnicki de Bogorya [an actual polish name...seriously I did the research!] and he could bludgeon me with a Brazilian sausage). So....if I was the dog, I would use that time out of the house to stretch my furry little legs, take in the scenery, and yap at as many neighborhood children as possible. Sounds like fun, right? Well, not to this dog. This dog prefers to smell trees. Her tree-sniffing habit seriously grossed me out because, after growing up with four brothers, I know what subhuman species use trees for (But back to good old Erasmo Skotnicki de Bogorya for just a quick second. I'm sure some of you are wondering why a Brazilian sausage would be his weapon of choice when he is a Polish hit man. The answer is that using a polish sausage would be a dead giveaway to the police. Erasmo watches CSI: Warsaw, like, every night so he totally knows how to get the coppers off his trail). So I spent a lot of time trying to pull her away from the trees. Notice I said "trying" to pull her away. Turns out, this little Paris Hilton of the Canine world has the ability to plant herself with such force that it is impossible for me to get her to move unless she wants to.
So last night, as I was waiting for her to get tired of sniffing what appeared to be a particularly pungent pine, I had an epiphany. I realized that to Chloe, the scents around that tree were telling her a story. She was reading the apparently exciting narrative of all the other animals that have spent time near that tree in the past few days. So as a teacher of literature who spends an awful lot of time trying to convince other small, fuzzy, slightly smelly creatures to read, my disgust for Chloe's tree-sniffing habit was extremely hypocritical. I can't even fault her for wanting to sniff the same tree over and over again. Just last month, I decided to re-read the last Harry Potter book, which I had already re-read about 8 times since it came out last July.
That, of course, led to me re-reading the other 6 books, in reverse order (Why reverse order? Because then instead of watching them die, I get to see all of my favorite characters come back to life as I read. Hey, don't scoff. I'm sure Erasmo Skotnicki de Bogorya the Polish hit man has read the Harry Potter series backwards at least once in his life. Right, Erasmo? At least YOU understand me).

Now don't misunderstand. I am in no way comparing the wonders of the written word to puddles of piddle left under trees....oh...well....I guess I am. But I am not comparing them in an attempt to belittle my beloved books. I just wanted to share my realization that when Chloe picks a tree to smell, digs in, and pulls on her leash like she is in the photo below, she is not all that different than me when I....
...well, I think you get the point.
So when I take Chloe for a walk tonight and she decides to spend twenty minutes with her nose pressed to the bark of a large oak or maple tree, I won't be rushing her along. After all, she could be right in the middle of an addicting story line about a forbidden love between a Rottweiler and a tabby, or a husky and a squirrel, or an accident-prone 17-year-old girl and a vegetarian vampire...
...Oh, wait. That is the story line I'm following. Hey, that gives me an idea! I wonder how many times I'd trip and fall if I tried to read while I walked Chloe. (Hummm....that's probably not a great idea. I would probably seriously injure myself, making Erasmo Skotnicki de Bogorya's trip kind of redundant. That would be very inconsiderate of me considering the cost of airfare these days, and as the above post proves, I am nothing if not considerate.)