Puppy Love?

Why does my head completely disregard the age of my body? I found myself, bag in hand, heading out to jump the chain link fence to surreptitiously enter the neighbor's back yard. How did I get to the point I found myself in, of hoping against hope that this particular neighbor liked to sleep in on a Labor Day morning as, nose to the ground, I crept around the lawn clad in nothing but a pair of short pyjama bottoms, a hoodie and tennies with no socks? (have I mentioned how much I hate the feeling of sneakers with no socks? the reason, I am sure, I was not cool in high school.)

Blame it on the dog. Him really tries to be a berry good puppy, except for him's nasty habit of preferring to poo on a carpeted surface, especially if it is raining and the grass is cold and wet all the way up to his short little shoulders. It stinks being short. So I follow him like a hawk when I take him outside to take care of business, it is all business until we're done. 

But Tuxy, being a puppy, takes any opportunity to frolick and run. I neglected to put him on a leash today. He usually does fine, first thing in the morning, without a leash. He stayed right next to me for the longest time, and then, my gaze must have followed a flock of geese for a moment, he was wriggling his furry little body under the fence, into the yard next door. I used my "open the door to the house" trick to entice him back and grabbed the leash while I was at it. Time elapsed with back turned; maybe 25 seconds. He was back and attached in record time. But as I continued to wait, puppy on leash now, for the next 20 minutes for the act to appear, I wondered; "could he have done it when I ran inside, in the NEIGHBOR'S YARD? Ugh, not cool.

So there I was, vaulting over the fence, at 6am, praying for the miracle of a sleeping neighborhood, and wondering if my hip was going to heal quickly from the damage I'd done while leaping from the fence into the dewy grass. Serves me right.