亞曆山德拉·曼迪斯/Alexandra Mandis
My dog, Harry, and I are very close. Harry, an eighty-pound Dalmatian, listens to me when I am upset, comforts me when I am blue and goes everywhere with me. He cares for no other person like he does for me, his beloved mama. Having raised him since he was an eight-week-old pup, I feel the same way about him-he is my blue-eyed boy.
One beautiful Sunday morning, Harry and I went to Central Park. Harry was running off leash on Dog Hill, along with all the other city dogs, while their owners enjoyed a spring day in the park.
I was feeling down because I had been recently laid off from the job I’d held for ten years. Being in the park with Harry was one of the ways I forgot for a while that I was out of work-and that my prospects were not looking good in a tough economy.
I was standing at the bottom of Dog Hill talking to another dog owner when all of a sudden, we heard someone shout,“He peed on my leg!”I turned to look, and lo and behold, at the top of the hill I saw a lady gesticulating at my beloved boy, who apparently was the culprit. Horrified, I rushed up the hill. Harry had never done anything remotely like this before.
When I got to where the woman was standing, I reached down quickly and grabbed hold of Harry’s collar in case he decided to do anything else untoward. The woman was bent over, trying to clean up her leg. She was pulling off her shoe because the pee had dribbled down her leg all the way into her shoe.
We straightened up at the same moment, and for a shocked instant, we looked at each other.
“Alexandra!”she said.
“Valerie!”It was my former boss-the one who laid me off three months before.
I apologized to Valerie for Harry’s behavior, but all the way home, I laughed and laughed, and gave Harry lots of kisses and hugs. Harry, of course, was thrilled that he clearly had pulled off a winning stunt-though, fortunately, he has never repeated his performance.