New dance that may not quite catch on (06/06/07)

I think I've invented a new dance.

But I'm not sure anyone else will join in.

It was about a week ago, early on a weekday morning.

I'd gotten up when the alarm went off at 6 a.m. and had gone downstairs.

As the first order of business, I checked on the dog.

She's 14 now, which translates into something like 98 in dog years, so life's getting more complicated.

While we moved upstairs to a remodeled bedroom, she's taken to staying downstairs. Like many old Labrador retrievers, her hind carriage is getting arthritic and harder and harder to control.

Some of that translates into trouble getting up and down the stairs. Some of it translates into not being able to control her lower extremities. In other words, she sometimes poops in the house.

That particular morning, things looked good. The living room was clean. The family room, where Shadow was sleeping, was clean. The kitchen was clean.

I praised her profusely after I woke her up and put her out on her chain. And I praised her again when I let her back in a few minutes later, after I had made the coffee, picked up the morning paper at the curb, filled the dog food bowl, and poured a couple glasses of V-8 juice.

It was only after I had let her in that I wandered into the room that's now my study. (It's also a guest room, but that sounds far less cool than study.) I was going to do my morning exercises, a not very strenuous workout that I do every work day.

Noticing that the blinds were a bit too open, I stepped across the unlit room to close them.

And found it.

With the ball of my right foot.

A half a second later, recoiling from my first foot contact with dog poop of the day, I stepped back with my left foot.

And found more.

At that point, emotion rather than logic took over.

I immediately shouted a swear word loudly enough that I probably woke up the baby next door. Half a decibel louder, and my grandfather Ronald would have been spinning in his grave.

But having gotten that out of my system, I found myself wondering: What next?

With one significant chunk of dog poop attached to my left heel and another attached to the ball of my right foot, I was more than a little inconvenienced.

Crawling was out of the question. The room was still dark, and I didn't know what other perils might await me on the carpet.

Finally, I danced.

That is, I walked strangely on the heel of my right foot and the ball of my left foot, making my way to the utility room, where I could grab some paper towels.

A few minutes later, the mess was cleaned up and had been pitched outside in a recycled plastic bag from Lo-Bill. (At times I wonder what future archaeologists are going to make of all that poop in shopping bags that we've sent to the landfill. Archaeologist one to archaeologist two far in the future: "What do you think these people were shopping for?")

At any rate, the mess was cleared up. And along the way I managed to invent a new dance.

Trust me, I'll completely understand if you don't want to join in.[[In-content Ad]]