This morning I packed the car to return from Monterey. The dogs get excited, so they actually get into the car first so that I can shut the doors and not worry about them. My little beach house shares a driveway with a family with a big boxer named Titus. He is sometimes loose on the property.
I loaded up my suitcase, the cooler bag of food, all the other stuff, and then I went back to lock up the house. When I returned to the car, I still had one more task — I had to tether Daisy to a leash tied to the head rest, because otherwise she would be in my lap on the drive back or in the wheel well by the gas pedal and brakes.
She was sitting in my seat when I opened the back door. Normally she moves to the back seat where the tether is, but today she bolted out the door and ran through my neighbor’s backyard, through a hole in their fence, across the recreation trail, and onto someone’s else’s property. Then I saw the animal start running. Daisy, all 20 pounds of her, was chasing an adult deer.
A pause is needed here to relay what happened to my sister’s beagle when a deer got too close to her in my sister’s Santa-Cruz-mountains-property’s unfenced yard. Sis stepped out of the house to yell at the deer to get! Deer walked over to dog and kicked dog. Sis spent $2000 at the vet to save beagle.
The deer did not stop running to kick Daisy, who was a white blur, and then she was gone.
“Dang it!” I said to the other dog as I glanced at my watch. It was already after 10:30. Daisy was messing up my plans to get home in time for lunch.
I heard some commotion a couple of houses down, but I stood and waited. Daisy has run off before, and she always comes back. She knows who feeds her.
Sure enough, I saw a white blur two houses over (it helps that everyone has wire fences down here). She ran along the fence to the trail and then came through the hole in the fence to my neighbor’s yard and then boop! She was back at the car. I opened the door as I saw her coming, and she hopped in, panting up a storm.
“Did you have a good time?” I asked her.
Pepper in her doggie car bed looked bored. I tethered Daisy to the head rest. Then I backed out the one-hundred-foot driveway until I realized I’d left the bananas in the kitchen.
Car in park. Walk down driveway. Open gate, walk to back door. Unlock door, get bananas, lock door, shut gate, walk down long driveway, try to leave again.
Between road construction, a trip to see my other sis, and then the Dell computer repairman appointment to replace the power cord on my new laptop and also to install a new jack for the plug, I finally ate lunch at 3:15.
Daisy is glad to be home. She is hiding under my bed. She’s a little strange, or maybe she’s just tired after her big chase.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 