2025 Quotables – Week 3 (Submissions)

I walk my dog every day. Tucker’s closing in on 10, but he’s got the energy of a puppy so we’ll do 2-3 miles easy, sometimes more.

We run into a lot of dogs on our walks. Some he gets along with, some not so much. One I had to kick when she tried to bite him. So it goes.

One of his favorites is Nikki. Tucker sees Nikki walking towards him and he gets all excited, hauls on his leash until they’re next to each other, then it’s a tail wagging, nose touching, butt sniffing party. Great pals, them.

But Nikki is old. Like 15+ old. Which for dogs is “uh-oh” territory.

Today, as we head down our usual street we run into one of Nikki’s owners.

Without Nikki.

Uh-oh.

She tells us that Nikki is being put down Thursday. Her age has caught up with her, she’s blind, has no bowel/bladder control, not eating, the whole thing. They’d rather get it done a little too soon than make her hold on a little too long.

We commiserate.

Tucker tries to eat roadkill.

We move on.

Now, when we get in the woods I generally let Tucker choose the trails and I just follow along. He has his usual routes and, generally speaking, if we start in one direction I can pretty much tell where we’ll wind up.

Not today.

Today we take the most bizarre route through the woods he’s ever taken. We basically did a figure 8.

We come out at the bottom of Nikki’s street. We walk by Nikki’s house.

Just as Nikki comes out from the house with her owner for one last, (and very slow), walk up and down the driveway.

Tucker runs up to sniff at her, tail wagging, all excited. Nikki sniffs at him and pees herself, then tries to follow us. It was very sad, but at the same time, because the Universe worked its way into that collection of synapses Tucker laughingly calls a brain and had us do a loop-the-loop through the woods and come out at the exact right spot at the exact right time, Tucker got to see his friend one last time.

And I ask, now with a bit of a lump in my throat, if the Universe can do that, then WHY THE FUCK CAN’T IT WAIT UNTIL THE ESCALATOR HAS ACCELERATED HALF WAY TO THE NEXT LEVEL BEFORE LURCHING TO A SUDDEN STOP SO THAT ANYONE ON IT, INCLUDING HYPOTHETICALLY AN ORANGE MENACE TO ALL HUMANITY, GOES FLYING FORWARD AND HYPOTHETICALLY CRACKS THEIR HYPOTHETICAL HEAD OPEN ON THE STEEL RUNGS OF SAID ESCALATOR SO WE CAN ALL HYPOTHETICALLY FEAST ON THE HYPOTHETICAL GOO INSIDE!?!?!?!?

Because that would quite frankly be a better use of your time, Universe.

Still, appreciate the effort today.

/Glares at the Giants

LOOK WHAT YOU’RE DOING TO KATE MARA!!! LOOK AT HER!!!