My Marley Moment

The other day, Cecilia was at work and so I came home after school to find Lucy playing outside. I joined her out in the backyard because I needed to test my sprinklers. So while Lucy's running back and forth the yard, I played with the settings to my automatic sprinklers. The annoying part about testing the sprinklers by yourself is that I to walk back and forth from the backyard to the front to check the status of each sprinkler section. On occasion, Lucy would walk down the dog run with me to see what was going on. I would make sure that the side door stayed closed each time that I came in and out as to keep Lucy in. Unfortunately, the last time that I slammed the door behind me, the metal latch never dropped down to keep the door shut. I didn't find this out until I was on my way out to the front again and saw that the door was opened to the outside world...and so did Lucy, who was right at my side. We both saw the opened door and then, as if she didn't believe what she was seeing, Lucy glanced over at me as I glanced concernedly back at her. I took a calm and cautious step toward the door when Lucy bolts right out of the yard at top speed...and the chase was on.

I took off after my dog in the absolute worse condition as I had yet to change out of my work clothes and I was wearing my $1 Walmart flip-flops. Lucy ran out from yard-to-yard, thinking that we were playing the "you can't catch me" game that I usually played with her indoors. So every time that I got near her, she would make a quick cut away from me and bolt further and further down the street. A few screams of "Lucy!" and "Stop!" later, I had flip-flopped my way down to the park two full blocks away from my house.

Finally, Lucy stops at a big tree at the edge of the park to sniff around. I was breathing a hard sigh of relief because I was glad that there weren't any cars around when Lucy ran across the streets. But as I reached my hand out to grab her collar, Lucy put it into high gear again and she turned the park into her own personal playground. I spent the next few minutes chasing after Lucy as she ran circles around me. It wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't have my tie flapping around me as I struggled moving around in my dress slacks and those crummy flip-flops. There were times where Lucy would run right past me and I'd dive at her, only to come up with a handful of air. I was only put out of my misery when a little dog and his owner came walking down the park and Lucy decided to stop and say, "hi." They distracted her enough for me to finally catch up with her and grab her by the collar. I thanked the dog owner and he joked that I owed his dog a treat. Then I hiked home with my hand firmly gripped on Lucy's collar, wondering how I'm going to explain to Cecilia that Lucy took me on a run today.