"I don't know WHAT you're talking about."

Have you ever been spanked by your dog? With a stick? I have. I swear, I don’t make this stuff up. I may exaggerate a little, but it all stems from a truth. As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, Olive has a love affair with sticks. The dog must have a stick in her mouth while walking. Kind of like a cigarette smoker who cannot drive without sucking on a cigarette. Orally fixated, kinetically expressed.

Olive is not intimidated by the size of the stick. I’ve seen her pick up a fairly large-sized limb from a tree and try dragging it behind her. I usually have to perform an emergency amputation of the branch that is already in her mouth and we walk away with that and she seems satisfied. Until she sees the next desirable stick. I have yet to figure out why she finds certain sticks attractive and others do not merit even a second sideways glance. Thank God telephone poles are “vertically planted sticks.”

Yesterday though, she spanked me. With a stick. Repeatedly.

During our daily walk, Olive picks up a stick about the size of a drum majorette’s baton. Slightly shorter in length, but the circumference looked about right. Not a wimpy stick. A handsome one too if it could be said that a stick is handsome. The Brad Pitt of sticks.

She’s walking on my right, slightly behind me and she begins gnawing on the far right end of the stick. This places the bulk of the stick strategically behind…my behind. As she chomps down on the stick with all the vigor of Paul Bunyon, the left end of the stick bats my ass. This act repeats itself about a half dozen times and picks up a distinct rhythm, sounding like one of the songs from Paul Simon’s “Graceland” album. With each chomp, I can sense Olive becoming frustrated that my ass is preventing her from fully enjoying her stick gnawing experience. CHOMP. SWAT. CHOMP. SWAT. CHOMP. SWAT. CHOMP. SWAT. CHOMP. SWAT. CHOMP. SWAT.

It creates the distinct impression to passersby that my dog is spanking me.