Tell Me About the Good Dogs You Know
Woof woof woof.
My home office looks out onto a quiet residential street in a fairly walkable neighborhood where, for the past year, a pair of tall, eastern-facing windows have become one of my most valuable lifelines to the outside world — specifically, when it comes to dogs. So many dogs.
At this point after a year of staying largely homebound, working behind these two windows onto the world, I've seen a lot of dogs; I've seen the Burmese mountain dog the family around the corner bought last spring; I've seen the Corgi puppy the couple down the block brought home a few months later; I've seen the appallingly well-behaved lab across the street tear ass to chase a tennis ball from one side of its lawn to another only to stop and sit absolutely still the moment its toy rolls off the curb and into the gutter.
There have been times — more than is probably dignified for a grown adult with two children — where I've stopped whatever I was blogging about, stood up to get a better look out the window in front of me, and then ran outside to say hi to whatever particularly friendly dog was pissing in our yard at that given moment. Sometimes I invite the rest of the family to see the nice dog, too. Sometimes I don't.
For the past year, my life has been a parade of dogs of all shapes and sizes, trotting or sprinting or being reluctantly dragged across my field of vision. They come and go in short bursts — just a few seconds from when they enter from the far side of one window until they exit from the other. Since I sat down to write this, I've seen four dogs already. Would I care so much about this cavalcade of canines were we not on the tail end of a yearlong pandemic that's left us lonely, bereft, and isolated in varying degrees of severity? I don't know. But here we are, and I suspect that when I think back on this past year, a lot of what I'll remember is looking out my window and seeing dogs.
So, this week for Office Hours I thought we could bring the view from my window over here to the comments section, where I'd love to see some pictures, descriptions, and anecdotes about the very good dogs in your life. What're they like? What's the worst thing they've done? What're they up to right now? Let's share some dog stuff, folks. We could all use a nice canine pick-me-up, right?
Here, I'll go first:
So there you go, folks. Have at it. This week's Office Hours is for the dogs. Woof.