"What was I doing?"

As I took my crazy little beast outside this evening to deposit her expensive organic dinner, she got a rare treat. (And not the edible kind.) Just as she was about to launch her brown biscuit, what catches her unerring eye? A hot air balloon floating nearby. In what must be the equivalent of pulling up one’s pants as if they are on fire and jumping off the porcelain throne, Olive springs up from a mid-squat and starts racing toward the object, barking like she is the first one to spot an aggressively approaching UFO. “WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO- WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO.” I see the fur along the length of her spine, raising from the nape of her neck to the base of her tail. It gives the appearance of being darker than the rest of her taupe coat, making it look like a stripe. “WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO-WOO.” Now, I do find this very amusing. Even though as you may know if you read this blog regularly, that I am cursed when I bring Olive out to potty. My dog, who is so alert that she can detect an imperceptible shift in the fabric of the universe, is distracted from her impending biological need almost every time I bring her out to complete this task. If it’s not a bicyclist or jogger going by, it’s a neighbor pulling into or out of their driveway. Or the postman pulling up to the mailbox or the sanitation truck pulling up to our trash can. Yesterday, it was two escapee pheasants from the local pheasant farm which was unfortunately, badly damaged during the Snoctober event earlier in the week. I thought Olive was going to have a seizure as she watched these two delicately framed convicts race across our back yard. “REALLY, I THINK. WHAT NEXT? WHAT ELSE COULD POSSIBLY DISTRACT MY DOG? MAYBE THE CHESHIRE CAT’S HEAD WILL APPEAR IN THE SKY.” I try to divert Olive’s attention away from the hot air balloon but she is fixated on this object as it bounces lazily across the cold blue winter-like sky in her line of sight. “LET’S GO BACK INSIDE OLIVE. I THINK I HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM.”