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I was walking my collie Blue the other morning. (If you listen closely you can hear a collective groan emanating from three points not far from my home. My kids seem to think that I start every newsletter talking about a walk with Blue. But that is one bloated exaggeration. For the record, it's been seven...seven in eight years writing this newsletter. They made me so paranoid I had to check. Okay it's eight including this one. But only eight!)
Where was I?
Oh yeah...walking the dog. We live in a small town in southern Wisconsin, and our house is in a neighborhood two blocks from farm fields. Thus I walk Blue off-leash most of the time.
Blue chases things. Usually rabbits.
On this particular morning we moseyed to the end of our block, and out along a field in which there is one tree. Suddenly Blue was gone.
I flashed to my right to behold my collie in full gallop right for this tree. I figured it was a rabbit she saw and the chase would be a short one...always is. Rabbits are really fast...and darty.
Instead, I saw her pull up under the tree and there, mouth gaping, eyes bugging with a sixty-five pound dog bearing down on it, was a fat furry chubby little groundhog. Up on its hind legs, arms extended...it froze. Blue slapped at it almost as if to say, "Dude, you're supposed to run!" And after its brief frozen moment...it did.
Have you ever seen a groundhog "run?" They don't really. They wobble. Thus I've been known to call them ...wait for it....wobblies. Incredibly clever I know.
So the wobbly took off. Umm...okay it...umm...what's the phrase...got started. Wobble it did. And Blue dutifully chased.
Collies are herding dogs, and so Blue had no intention of sinking her teeth into the back of the wobbly. Her enjoyment is in the running...someone had to escort this poor animal back to its hole, and Blue was up for the job.
But no one told the wobbly it wouldn't be breakfast. It ran like its fur was on fire, scared out of its plump little mind. Blue, tail wagging delightfully, chased alongside like a sixty-five pound side car.
The wobbly ran. I never saw such a desperate wobbly. It never broke wobble. Straight as a wiggly arrow it ran. It didn't slow down even for a second. It didn't look left or right. It didn't look at Blue either. Focused it was.
After about fifty yards, the wobbly disappeared. Blue was perplexed. I mean the game was just getting fun. But the wobbly was gone. It had reached its hole...home and safety.
Blue shook off her perplexity and trotted back to me satisfied in a job well done.
And I thought, oh to have the focus of a fat furry little wobbly desperately running across a prairie for home while being chased by a sixty-five pound collie.
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