On Thursday, I didn’t take my usual, several miles long walk with our dogs. It started out as a rainy day and I wanted to get errands done, but also, I wanted to escape a little bit, to get away from the mundane – to get the “hell out of Dodge”, so to speak. Ralphie, our Labrador retriever, doesn’t, at all, appreciate when we miss a daily walk. He can’t speak, so he lets his anger and frustration be known, in other ways.
As my husband and I settled down on the couch, to watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel Thursday evening, Ralphie eyed us carefully and deliberately, up and down. He then went to his toy tub and carefully chose one of his stuffed animals. I think that Ralphie purposely picked out the newest, cutest one. He brought the stuffed animal behind the couch, where we were sitting, and he slowly and methodically, tore the poor, little, helpless stuffie, into a million little pieces. Ralphie made sure that we heard the seams ripping, and the fabric shredding effortlessly, in the clutches of his powerful jaws and sharp teeth. I tried to pretend like I didn’t notice. I feigned indifference, but I was admittedly, very relieved when Ralphie’s tooth finally pierced the poor little toy’s squeaker and I no longer had to hear its wailing squeals. Friday morning, I had a huge massacre of stuffing and crinkly paper and cloth carcass to clean up, having been mercilessly spread, all over the floor. Ralphie left the murder scene as a warning, I am sure. I couldn’t stop flashing back in my mind, to that horse head scene in the Godfather movie.
Friday, I took the dogs on a long, long walk. Ralphie, by the way, is a Dudley Labrador retriever. Dudley labs are yellow labs with pinkish-brown noses and lips, as opposed to black noses. A woman asked me about his coloring once. I told her that Ralphie is a Dudley lab. She thought that I had said that Ralphie was a “deadly lab.” When we figured out the miscommunication, we both laughed and I said, “I don’t think that there is such thing as a deadly lab!” Now . . . . I’m not so sure.