This morning, I woke up with the plan of luxuriously spending my day lounging around, listening to Evanescence, doodling, and reading whatever magazines I could get my hands on. Unfortunately, there was one thing in the equation that I completely forgot: the dog. As luck would have it, he was in desperate need of a walk. I half-expected him to take his leash and drop it in front of my feet. 
    So at 9:00 in the morning, when I should have been chilling out in my robe, I was suiting up to take the dog out walking. "Thanks to you, I'm losing a lot of beauty sleep," I told Yogi. He stared at me with melting dark brown eyes, his tongue lolling out. It was clear that he wasn't backing out on this one. With a sigh, I headed out with Yogi following suit.
    Soon we were on the walking route, and I was exchanging good mornings and hellos with whoever I bumped into. Eventually, I just gave a strained smile to everyone I saw. I was still pretty ticked about having my whole schedule ruined by this walk. The dog and I walked in silence, him occasionally peeing and I occasionally yanking at the leash in a failed attempt to get him to behave.
    Maybe it was a mixture of sleepiness and the heat, but I eventually started talking to Yogi. Most of it was just blatant nonsense, such as, "You know what, Yogi? I would really like a wolf. A wolf with wings and we would just fly around scaring people." Or I would get philosophical and say, "I wonder what causes us humans to think and feel the way we do?"
    Soon, I was nattering on about anything and everything with Yogi. I was talking a lot more than I used to, saying that it took a lot more energy on my part to keep this conversation going than him. I started making hand gestures and wildly jumping around explaining my ideas and thoughts and dreams. A quick thing to know about me; when I'm on a roll, there's no stopping me.
    Except for one thing.
    "Excuse me..." I jumped out of my skin and turned around to a guy who was staring at me with a puzzled expression on my face. I cocked and eyebrow (Or, at least, tried to-I haven't exactly mastered that yet) and asked him what was wrong. "Well, I was just wondering if you were...okay...because, you know, you were..." He made a helpless gesture.
    Luckily I caught on. Only then did I realize that I had been subconciously having an energized conversation about nonsense with my dog. Turning bright red, I stuttered an apology and yanked on the leash. We were going home. "This is all your fault," I told Yogi on the way back, glaring. "If you had told me what I was doing earlier, this never would have happened." Noticing that yet another person was staring at me, I hastily added, "If you could talk, of course."
    I quickened my pace, worried thoughts running through my mind. What if someone had filmed this event and was going to put it on YouTube? What if I was going to be famous as the girl who talked nonsense to her dog? What if my social life was doomed? I glared at Yogi once again, thinking that it was all his fault and that if he didn't need a walk, this never would have happened.
    After a long silence, I sighed and said, "You know what, Yogi? I'm going to go online when we get home and see if this whole dog-talking thing is normal. I mean, maybe this is actually normal and I'm just psyching myself out about it, you know? But still, I don't think that it was the best first impression for everyone who saw me. Oh...wait...I'm talking to you again, aren't I?"
    We humans never learn.
    



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