Tuesday, February 18, 2020

A Mini-Misadventure In Dog Walking

So there we were walking along, the mongrel Skye and me, for our last walk of the day at about 2145 tonight. As we do most walks, we were in the park across the street from our apartment complex. We walked around the paved path in the front of the park then started around the outer perimeter of a baseball field, walking just outside the fence. That field, not the ball field but the one outside the fence, is still soaked from last week's rains. Then it drizzled for awhile today and I guess added to it. Everything is kind of, sort of, pretty much on the soggy side. By getting us right up next to the fence, we were on a bit of higher ground. The ground gently slopes down once outside the fence of the ball field and the lower portion of the field is kind of swampy, last week a lot of it looked like a pond. I figured that walking right along the fence would keep us away from any soggy spots and we'd stay dry. Walked there earlier and it was okay. Well, it wasn't okay tonight. 

As we were waling along, my left foot suddenly was swallowed by the earth as if a small portal to hell had opened under it to suck it in. I sank down several inches, the mini-sinkhole devouring my entire left foot and a few to several inches of my left leg. Skye jumped away into the ball field fence, bounced off, look totally scared shitless and pulled on her leash. Luckily I still had a tight grip on it or she may have run off to wherever. I landed on my right knee and luckily was easily able to extract my left foot with the untied shoe still on it - not that still having my shoe mattered all that much. It was totally soaked and covered in foul smelling mud that smelled just like swamp stink, that stink that rarely comes out.



Now, I've sank that deep in the mud while walking in a pond or swampy area before but I certainly never expected it walking around a ball field, especially over ground I routinely cover on our multiple daily walks. The ground did not seem too soggy and felt relatively firm at every step - that is except that one. You can safely bet that I was happy the soggy sucking mini-sinkhole spot was not any bigger and deeper or I may have been in trouble. Of course, as it turned out it was only a minor inconvenience that I laughed about a bit as I pondered my luck while slogging back to the apartment with Skye who somehow managed to avoid the mud. One thought on the bright side - at least it wasn't a hole filled with a huge amount of dog doody!

Threw the pants and socks into the wash with some other things once home. Used the spray nozzle in the kitchen sink to hose down the shoes and get most of the mud off of them but I think the stink is not going anywhere. The shows are probably ruined but I'll try to clean them some more and try to get the stink out and who knows maybe they will recover. If not, in the trash they will go and that would be too bad because they were not that old and in good shape before this mini-misadventure, one that was a prime example of my kind of luck.

I think Skye and I may need to find new trails to blaze for our dog walks, at least when the ground is still drenched from downpours like those we went through last week with several inches of rain over three days.

All the best,
Glenn B