A Conversation With Dog

One of those mornings.  

Two dog walks down, a mile power walk, and the bike ride was yet to come.

I was sitting in the big green chair.  It faces the car port and next to the dog in what has become His Corner.

Yes, it is capitalized that way.  His Corner.  He sits there all day if I am home, and you can see how active I am.  Bike Ride Days are moderately active for me, Skate Days I go at a calorie deficit all day if I maintain my normal training diet.  The other three days are what most people would consider active as I walk between four to five miles a day in four dog walks. 

The health insurance company I use thinks that I am too active as they stop giving me points by "maxing me out" on active days.

On the second dog walk of the day, the one with the power walk at the end of it, we noticed that today was a special day that happens once a month.  Yes, it was Bulk Trash Day.

We have regular trash day twice a week, recycling once a week, and Bulk Trash once a month where everything "else" gets picked up by a truck with a big claw on the back and put into an open truck and moved somewhere.  I have actually seen these trucks on the road and you really don't want to get behind one, things fly off.

I have a clear view to the corner near my house, in the general direction of Fort Myers or Naples, depending on where I am sitting and which telephone pole I look at.  Way over the Everglades from here in Wilton Manors. 

The people who live on the corner love to celebrate holidays.  They build structures out of plastic pipe and foam board and sparkles and bits of string.  They are truly creative.  However that stuff collects.  This Bulk Trash Day they decided to clear out the chaff and among the particle board furniture and cardboard boxes, they left some of that plastic pipe.  Yoink! You're mine!  I need to strengthen that Lean-To I have to protect my orchids in the summer when the trees get trimmed.

Those partially assembled plastic rectangles are now behind the Jeep.  I have to tell them not to glue this stuff together and use some plastic bags for compression fittings.  If the thing you are building does not need to be watertight or structural, a little bit of plastic in the fittings will gum up the works just enough to have things stable for the event, and you can reuse instead of trash the pipes.   I have rescued quite a lot of PVC pipe from their bulk trash before.

Having gone back to the Big Green Chair, I'm working through my Spanish tests online and I hear a Bass Drum BOOM from the corner.  Looking up I notice the claw dropping an old white couch into the hopper.

I also hear at my elbow a low rumble.

"Rack it's ok, look!"

He looks at me.

"No, Rack, it's the truck on the corner.  Up!  See?"

I point at the corner.  

Rack stands up, stretches, then puts his feet up on the window well.  He looks over at the corner, then me.

"See?  It's just the truck on the corner.  It's OK, you don't need to grumble."

Immediately, he stops.  Relaxed, he curls back into the dog ball he was on the big blue poof of a dog bed in the corner at my elbow. 

I laugh at him when I realize he took the plush Squirrel Toy off my chair.  "You're not supposed to be that bold, that's my chair you little dingus!"

I guess when all has been said and done, he's had a conversation with me too.

As I finish this, I hear that familiar grumble and look up.  Fed-Ex is out front.  "Rack, No."  He settles back down and peace has been restored.