Tim
Once I had a job walking dogs. It was great. I love walking and I love dogs and I love talking to the people I meet while I’m out and about. Walking dogs is a great way to meet people and different kinds of people respond to different kinds of dogs. I enjoyed being chatted up by well-heeled women about teacup poodles, or bonding with burly looking dudes over pit bulls. But it was most fun when people surprised me.
I remember one dog on my route, Tim. Tim was a brindle greyhound who lived in a big house in the nice part of town. He was nervous but good-looking and I was proud to be seen with him. (I didn’t feel the same way about Etta and Duke, a pair of amiable but ugly Pugs from down by the tracks.)
I was walking Tim one day when we passed a man. The man stopped.
“Wow! That’s a beautiful Greyhound,” he said. He was about sixty, cowboy boots and plaid shirt tucked into belted Wranglers. He looked out of place in the city.
“Thanks, isn’t he? His name is Tim.”
“Is he a rescue?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s wonderful. I used to live across from a guy who had a Greyhound farm.”
“Oh really?”
”Yes. He wasn’t good to his dogs.”
“Oh.”
“He had a pickup with a big cage and he’d take the dogs out to hunt wolves.”
“No. Please don’t tell me any more.”
“Wolves and coyotes and rabbits.”
“Oh.”
“He used the Greyhounds as the sight dogs, you see, and then he had a team of scent dogs, bloodhounds, and they’d surround the wolf or coyote and kill it.”
“Oh God.”
“I only went out with him once, to see that, and then I said ‘never again’, because it was the worst thing I ever seen, the way they massacred that animal.”
“That’s horrible,” I said. “Tim was trained as a hunting dog but I guess he wasn’t very good at it so they got rid of him. He’s the best trained dog I’ve ever seen. Look at the way he heels-to.”
I turned in a circle, while Tim, keeping pace, stayed with me all the way around.
“He sure is pretty to watch,” said the man.
“Yeah,” I said, “but I’ve got to say he’s not the smartest dog I’ve ever met. I would call him bird-brained but I think most birds are probably smarter than he is. I’m not sure Greyhounds are all that intelligent.”
“They’re not. I have racing pigeons at home and they’re much smarter. About the only dog less intelligent than a Greyhound is an Irish Setter.”
“Oh yeah, but what they lack in brains they make up for in beauty. Like Tim.”
“He sure is a looker.”
“Yeah.”
I had a greyhound, a retired racer. Blonde was a dear one. She made it to age 14!
I used to know an Irish setter. She was the dumbest dog, but such a looker.
Great little slice, Anna!💕