It’s funny the way dogs seem to have good days and bad days. Mack is pretty even-keeled, but he does have a temper, and some days it gets the better of him more quickly than others. Beene has on-days and off-days. “Off days” means she has difficulty making it through a doorway without screwing it up, and “on days” means it’s not an off-day. Today seems to have been an average day for Mack, but Beene was on top of her game all day . That doesn’t mean she was actually on top of her game; it just means that she felt extra good about herself and everything she was doing.

I feel bad for Mack that I write about Beene more than I do about him. It’s not that I like her more.  If anything it’s the opposite. But the fact is that he impresses me less often because my expectations are much higher for him than they are for her. With him, it ends up with me being annoyed with him because he forgot to take into account the curvature of space-time for the object (himself) versus the observer (everyone else) due to his current speed, whereas I’m overjoyed when Beene recognizes me when I wake her before 6 am.

I got the dogs up early this morning because Michelle and I had arranged to Skype at 7:00 and I wanted to be ready to leave for work when we finished up. Morning walks when Beene isn’t fully awake are pretty rough because she just plows ahead with her head down and doesn’t notice when we’re stopping to let Mack do his business. She outweighs Mack by roughly 100 pounds, so the poor guy doesn’t stand a chance. We use a Y-leash for them, so couple a 150 pound moron to a 60 pound mutt, and that little guy just gets ripped off the pot every time. When I raise my voice at her to tell her to stop and wait, she looks at me with those big brown empty eyes that say, “What? Am I not on the couch anymore?”

But it’s really hard to stay mad at her when we round the corner for the last uphill stretch to the house and she suddenly wakes up a bit and gets an extra spring in her step and holds her head a little higher. She’s so ignorantly optimistic, I just don’t have the heart to stay annoyed with her when she’s feeling so good about herself.