Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Smell of Wet Dog

Wednesday's at 10:30am are our regular park playgroup days. Last night we had our first hard freeze, "Sy" didn't wake up till 9:30am, and I had some errands I needed to run around town so we didn't go to playgroup. While running around I promised "W" that if he was good and stayed with me, (yesterday while I was putting "Sy" in her car seat "W" took off running down the sidewalk and around the corner of the store. It truly scared me to death.) that we could go to the park after all of my stops.

He kept his end of the bargain, so I had to keep my end. "W" has a tendancy to not like things to end, any time we go to a place he likes, (the park, or volleyball, or even the UPS store with the cool toy) he makes it very hard to leave. I end up having to practically drag him away kicking, screaming and crying. This makes me not want to take him to the park, but I promised. Instead of going to the park we have playgroup at I decided to take him to the park with the dog park. He loves to see the dogs. Its a long stretch with a sidewalk running along the fenced in dog part of the park, and to the other side of the sidewalk is a hill that ends in a type of bowl in the middle of the park. Great for kids to really run and get some energy used up. As we pulled up to the park I noticed that the sprinklers were running on the far side of the dog run. It wasn't watering the sidewalk part where we would be so I let the kids get out anyway.

"W" was running down the sidewalk, "Sy" clumsily running behind him trying to keep up, and I was walking slowly behind her. "W" stopped to look at some Shar-Pei's on the other side of the fence. As "Sy" and I were walking towards him, I was close to about 10 feet away; the sprinklers changed their setting. The group of sprinklers turned on right where we were. A long spray separated me from "W". At the moment neither of us were getting wet ("Sy" was on my hip), but the sprinkler was turning to where "W" was standing. I encouraged him to run parallel to the sprinkler down the hill into the grassy bowl area. He was too freaked out, he just stood there. I kept telling him, "run, run down the hill. You won't get wet, just run down the hill". Instead he started to cry a little and back up. The sprinkler that was separating us was getting closer to him, and he was backing up into the spray from the sprinkler behind him. The sprinkler behind him started spraying on him, and he started to cry more. Once that one passed, then the one between us started to spray on him. He started to cry even more. By this point I had a clear path too him, I ran to him and helped him run down the hill between still more sprinklers. We ran up the otherside of the bowl, and started walking to the truck so we could go home. His hair was all wet and his shoulders and the tops of his arms.

He was sad that we were going home, he wanted to see the dogs. I told him all the dogs were going home too because they didn't want to get wet either. As I was loading him up into the truck I smelled his wet hair. Even though he hadn't touched any dogs, he smelled like wet dog. It made me smile.
Posted by ABQ Mom :: 11/16/2005 02:42:00 PM :: 2 Comments:

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