Booker trotted along side of me as we jumped mud puddles and dodged friendly neighbors driving cars too fast down the gravel road. They always wave as if saying “Hi,” but I’m never quite sure. Maybe it’s more of a “Get you next time!” gesture as they zoom around the corner.
As I observed Ma Nature’s handiwork…a new and colorful display of wild flowers speckled the ditches..I noticed Booker had stopped to check a pee-mail.
“Booker, come on,” I said. “You’ve already read that one five times this week.”
He reluctantly raised his head up and strolled over to me. That is when I noticed “THE TUFT.” It was just an innocent little thing, a mere wisp of his winter undercoat ready to surrender to warm summer months. It was pure white, soft, and begging to be removed from Booker’s side. I couldn’t stop my fingers. Grab. Pull. Release.
The hair, airborne in the breeze, floated off to explore the world or plaster itself onto someone’s screen door. Hard to tell.
I looked down and discovered…another tuft sticking out. It reminded me of a tissue box. You know the kind that brings up another tissue when you remove the one sticking out? Yeah, like that. I pulled off that tuft of hair too. Then another and another and another. Was Booker unraveling? Would I be left with a hairless husky?
Pretty soon the gravel road was undulating with white dog hair puffs. Booker looked at me with a “And you gave me a bad time about the pee-mail? Whose got the obsessive problem now, huh?”
The weird thing is that after accumulating all that hair on my clothes, my fingers, the road, and the ditch, only a teeny-tiny patch of winter hair was missing from his side. “You’re feeling much cooler now, aren’t you?” I said sarcastically. Meanwhile each word came with a “pfffft, pffft, PFFFFFFFFTTTTTT!!!!” as I tried to spit out the hair stuck to my Carmexed lips.
It’s going to be a challenge to rid him of all that winter hair. Hopefully it will be gone before he starts regrowing it for the cold months ahead. (Which, it seems, will be in about two weeks.)
Realizing I shouldn’t start what I don’t want to finish? The best part of my day.
