This past Saturday morning found us without any house guests and no scheduled nor necessary away-from-the-house activities. Tex was going to work on one of his school assignments (he's pursuing his Master's Degree in Science and Civil Engineering (with an environmental focus; specifically, water). I was going to get caught up with a few projects from earlier in the week, and then spend the rest of the day getting ready for two of our nieces, a nephew-in-law and one of our great nephews to come for dinner later that evening.
By the way, dinner was chili and chicken-n-dumplings. Served in separate bowls, of course. Well, except for when one of our nieces decided that she wanted her 2nd helping to be a combo of the two dishes. I think we've created a new and oddly interesting dish - chumplings. Let me know if you want the recipe. :)
Why such two very different dishes served in one meal? Consider it a mini buffet. We had been promising one of our nieces some chili, and had been promising her sister some chicken-n-dumplings. There ya go; a two-for-one deal. A good time had by all . . . at least I hope so. Tex and I certainly enjoyed the evening.
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But I digress. Back to the following a.m.
It was a lazy Saturday morning for Tex and me. We even woke up later than we thought we would . . . and the sleep was absolutely blissful.
We then went out into the garage to sit, chat and watch the traffic go by in the alley next to our house; call it a slow waking-up, if you will.
I even convinced Tex to let the puppy girls come out into the garage to keep us company. The big deal in that is that they were unleashed. They can run around all they want in our back yard - our privacy fence contains them quite nicely (although, not their periodic exuberant barking). However, rarely do we let them come hang out with us when we're in the garage with the garage open (and rarely are we in the garage when such door isn't open). To their credits, our canine creatures truly are learning to just chill and relax with us out in the garage; but every now and then, they still like to test the waters to see how far out of the garage they can get before we reign them back in.
Suburban life with pets, doncha know.
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Lizzee, our 5-year old Golden Retriever / Chow loves, absolutely loves, her freedom; and if she's unleashed, she can take off running down the street before we even know what has happened. She thinks it's a grand game . . . and it's a game we try not to play . . . she runs really fast!
Echo, our 15-year old Beagle / Border Collie often tries to convince us that she's an old woman (usually when she wants to just lay around and sleep and not be bothered); but she still has enough spunk in her to also periodically push her own freedom limits.
But. Still. They are realizing that it's much more fun to hang out with us while we're in the garage rather than only wish they could while they're either inside the house or in the backyard where they will periodically stick their noses through a very small peep hole at the bottom of the fence trying to get glimpses of us.
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The girls love to go for their daily walks; especially Lizzee. She grins about it for hours afterwards. Really, she does.
By the way, there is, of course, gmail; of which I'm sure y'all are all aware, if even on the smallest level.
But! Have y'all ever heard of pmail? Lizzee certainly has. In fact, she checks her pmail frequently during her daily walk; and every now and then she even leaves a pee-mail or two of her own.
Just thought y'all would like to know.
It's a Tex-and-Sharmie-ism that we made up several months ago. Yeah, it's not just him and it's not just me . . . we're both pretty goofy; it's one of the reasons we make such a great couple; yep, yep.
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Many of y'all know that I have a tri-wheeler (an adult tricycle). This is my second one, actually. The first one was one of the original Schwinn tri-wheelers from the '70s. It was faded canary yellow. I loved that trike; I had it from 2002-2009. And I very much missed triking when I no longer had such wonderful contraption. My current trike is a couple of years old and is bright dark royal blue. The brand is Torker, for those of y'all so interested.
Regardless of the brand, I heartily recommend tri-wheelers. Try one for yourself!
By the way, the basket in the back of my trike can hold a considerable amount of groceries. It might take me a few minutes to get them all packed just so; but they will fit - and will do so in a manner so that nothing gets squished, broken or otherwise damaged. Of course, it does make the commute back home from the grocery store a bit more, uhm, weighty than the "to" trip . . . but that's ok. Consider it a unique kind of exercise weight.
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Back to the puppy girls; specifically Lizzee.
Sometimes, during her walks, Lizzee gets the idea that we're not going fast enough to suit her. So, she puts her head down in focused effort, strengthens her resolve and tries to literally plow ahead, pulling me as hard as she can. It makes me laugh to see her grit and determination.
So! Tex and I were talking about that, this past Saturday morning, as we often have . . . how she would make a good snow dog (if we lived where it snowed). We could just hook her up to a sleigh and off we'd go!
But. Since we don't live where it snows (fiddle, faddle), a sleigh probably wouldn't work too well. Good thing, too . . . we haven't a sleigh to our name.
But. We do have . . . drum roll, please . . . a trike!
The more we talked about it, the harder we laughed. Ya gotta admit, the imagery is something else. A dog pulling a trike??!!! Surely we jest.
Surely not.
It finally became too much for us to just imagine. We had to actually try it. Yes, we absolutely had to.
Tex usually doesn't ride my trike, but we both decided that he should be the pilot for this particular adventure / experiment.
I got 2 leashes off the rack, gave one to Tex and put one on Echo. He then put his leash on Lizzee and slipped the looped end over the handle bars of the trike.
And off we went. The four of us. I, walking Echo, and Tex perched on the seat of my trike with Lizzee leashed to the trike.
While we were still giggling and laughing about everything, we saw our across-the-street neighbor looking at us in what can only be described as bemused puzzlement. Of course I'm sure that our explanation didn't help his opinion of our sanity or lack thereof - "We wanted to see if Lizzee would pull the trike!" He just politely grinned and stood their staring at us; at that point, completely speechless.
At first, Lizzee was content to just happily trot alongside the trike, thinking it was all great fun. Then, Tex started pedaling slower and slower, so Golden Girl decided to take matters into her own paws and, yes, actually starting pulling the trike . . . with Tex on it!
Echo thought we were both nuts and refused to try to keep up. I considered that a good thing, seeing as how I was the one connected to her leash and I did not want to try to keep up with a rolling trike. Hey! I've ridden that thing. I've also been clocked at going 14MPH. Zoom, zoom! I'm quite sure, however, that Lizzee was not going that fast. No matter. A seat connected to 3 rolling wheels can go faster than I personally would like to match with my own two feet. I'm a triker. I'm a swimmer. I'm an aqua-classer. I am not, however, a runner; not even a jogger. Now you know.
After a few minutes, Tex decided to see how fast Lizzee was willing to go. He slowly started pedaling faster. Our sweet Chow girl was in her glory and she was going at a pretty good clip. Me? Well, I've never learned how to walk gracefully and laugh uproariously at the same time, so Echo and I were pretty-much standing still while watching the show.
And, yes, Tex did eventually slow down to a more manageable pace.
All-in-all, such adventure lasted about 10 minutes . . . from the time we left the garage, till the time we touched home base again.
After that, Lizzee came in the house and laid on the cool tile floor. All. Day. Long.
We must not have scared her off from her daily walks, though. The next day when we took the girls for their "real" walk (sans any wheeled machinery), she was enthusiastically raring to go.
Just between you and me, though, I do think she was secretly glad that Tex was going to be transporting himself via his own feet and not while perched on top of a tri-wheeler.
And just to let y'all know . . . both Echo and Lizzee are doing fine - AND they both got treats afterwards for being such good sports . . . the photo below is a couple years old, but it still comes very close to how they looked after their adventure this past Saturday morning.
Y'all be blessed!
Look for the fun in life.
~Sharmie
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