Freddy and his human

For reasons that elude me I have found myself drifting through one of my MST3000 cycles - where I watch awful movies just to hear a guy and a couple of robots cracking wise. The latest epic, Racket Girls, concerns professional women’s wrestling in the days before silicone implants. Hard to image such times….

But that’s not what I want to discuss today. To clear my pallet (still jaded from the Racket Girls of the previous night…) I went for a walk across the Little Miami River into Terrace Park. I ambled across the bridge snapping pictures as fast as I could (of dogs driving cars, plants growing out of concrete, hundreds of electric cars all parked in a cluster - the sort of thing one always sees around here) and after a time came upon two more pedestrians, a large dog and his human.

I asked permission to snap a pic (using low tech real film, naturally) to which the dog agreed with a woofing shrug. By that time I had gotten close enough for my eyes to slip into a semblance of focus (I’m still not wearing my glasses most of the time - and the world looks better for it…) and noticed that his human had copper colored hair with slight fluorescent overtones. Interesting….

The dog introduced himself as Theodore (‘but you can call me Teddy’) of the Bernese Mountain family. And his human he named as Brianna.

“Brianna,” I asked. “Is that a real name or a taken name?”

Real, of course.

Nifty.

By this time Teddy already seemed a bit restless, but he seemed willing to let the humans interact. He settled in the shade as we humans chatted.

I snapped another picture. This one of his human’s tattoo - one of his human’s tattoos, she had several - of a cat in a stained glass window setting (it turns out that her father makes stained glass creations).

Teddy made a grumbling sound at the mention of a cat - or rather of a cat tattoo - but being a Bernese Mountain dog and thus a creature of enormous good nature, he made no other complaint.

And it turned out that Teddy’s human was not his permanent companion, but a person who’s day job it is to assist doggies when their everyday companions are not available. Which may explain Teddy’s willingness to tolerate such oddness as a CAT tattoo.

Other tattoos included a dragon on the left shoulder and an unidentified flower like object in the upper mid back - all of which the human had designed herself and had a friend inscribe upon the canvas of her skin.

Quite nice, actually.

No visible piercings however - not even a dangle from an ear lobe. Odd….

After a few minutes conversation, Teddy rose and suggested he must be on with his constitutional. Polite but insistent.

With a nod to the two of them, I moved along and began my loop back to Milford.

Not a bad walk, actually….

Jim FitzPatrick, 2010 09-06

Postscript: As I reread this little blog, I realized that it seems a bit… well, ‘odd’ seems the right word. I wrote it after a 90 minute walk in the late morning as the temperature pushed upwards of 85 and I proceeded to leak a quart or three of water from the pores of my skin.

Now I’m of Celtic ancestry, pale of skin and moody of character, and I believe I wrote this essay under the influence of dehydration and borderline overheating.

Or maybe not…. Still an odd essay though….