Vomit Comet

You know, I’m a pretty patient dog. I’ll put up with a lot of stuff. But there is a point where I’m going to lose it, and I think I’m reaching that point.

So first, this white stuff comes. Snow? Yeah, that’s it. Snow. I could deal with that, sort of. Then the city put down something on the sidewalk so the humans don’t slip and fall and hurt themselves. Maybe they should walk on all fours like smart dogs do so they’d have better balance. Anyway, this salt stuff. It hurts me. I step on it, and yeeeep! Then I start limping. Yeeep yeeep! Get it off! I kick my foot. Yeeep yeeep yeeeeeep! Carin frantically rubs my foot until I stop yeeeeping. She mutters something about “I’m sorry.” Sorry isn’t good enough. Stop walking me through the yeeeepy salt if you’re so sorry! Then people stare. Ya know what? I challenge any of them to walk on this stuff in bare feet and not yeeep.

Then, Carin does something very weird. She starts putting shoes on my feet. She’s all happy because she thinks she’s found shoes that will fit me. Then she walks me around the house and laughs at the way I go clip clop clip clop. She calls me her little horsey doggy. I put up with this. The shoes aren’t on very long. If this makes Carin laugh, I’ll put up with it. Then she walks me around the building. Ok, this public amusement is a little much.

Then, she expects me to work in these shoes! Work? Ok, let me get this straight. I’m supposed to focus on keeping both of us safe, which is harder now since the city doesn’t move the white stuff very well off the sidewalk, and I’m supposed to do this while all I can think about is how I have these shoes on my feet. Carin has to be out of her mind. She has to be.

I express my disgust at these shoe things. I run from her when I see her break out the shoes. Then she gets mad. I go to bed and stay there. She herself said my bed was my own personal zone, a zone that no one could invade. . But it seems she can break this rule. I can’t break any rules without hearing about it, but she can break all the rules she wants? She drags me from the bed and says I’m going to wear the shoes. No fair. No fair! No fair no fair no fair! I stamp my feet. I riggle. I twist my paws. I fight fight fight. She just hangs on and puts the shoes on anyway. She does give me kibble after each shoe. Hmmm. Something good comes from this. But it’s not good enough to make me happy. My tail still droops. I’m miserable.

I did manage to figure out a way to get them off. Do I chew on them? No. Do I shake my feet? Nope. But if I roll around in the snow when Carin takes me out to pee, that works. Or, when we’re walking, if I hit deep enough snow, that works too. Wooo! Something good can come from snowbanks.

After I did that enough times, something else changed. Not only did I have to wear the shoes, but I had to wear this other thing on my back that she attached the shoes to. If I wasn’t completely miserable before, now I was. I couldn’t move well because it would wiggle jiggle. It would tie up my tail. It wasn’t easy to sit, but she still wanted me to. It was so distracting, so much so that I would walk, stop, walk, stop, walk, stop. I couldn’t think about working at all! Not in the least!

Now, she doesn’t seem to make me wear shoes, not shoes that I can see anyway. Instead, she has this thing of goo that she gets out in the morning. She takes my paws and rubs this goo all over my pads and between the pads. I don’t like it much either, but maybe it’s better than those shoes. Maybe I’ve won! Maybe I’ve been liberated from those horrible shoes! But if the stuff wares off, I still yeeeep! So I’m still not happy.

I have never seen anything like this weather before. Now I understand why I have fur for my fur. Without that other fur, I shake shake shake! There is so much wind here some days. Sometimes, it feels like the wind is an actual thing. It pushes me. I lose my sense of direction. I just want to find the nearest entrance to a building and go in. We don’t walk very far anymore. I miss the long walks. But there’s no way I would walk very long in this horrible stuff. I just want the nice stuff to come back. Will it ever come back? Please, I’m looking up at the sky. Yeeep yeeep. I’m begging you. Can’t you hear me? Yeeep Yeeep yeeep! Bring the nice weather back!