Dogged Determination

I’m sitting here at the park, watching this woman distractedly walking her dog. I say distractedly, because she’s yammering away on her cell phone the entire time. The woman has the leash encircling her left hand and most obviously wants the dog to walk on her left side. But for whatever reason, the dog keeps slowing down and walking behind the woman to get on her right side. As soon as the dog gets on the right, she speeds up to get ahead of the woman, wrapping the leash around the back of the woman’s legs.

The woman will step over the leash and pull the dog back over to the left or spin around to unwrap the leash, only to have the dog go behind her to the right again. I’ve been watching this go on for ten minutes now as the pair have made their way around the small pond in the park, laughing at the dog’s determination and the woman’s distracted obliviousness. And I can’t help but wonder why the woman never took a few seconds just to move the leash to her right hand.