Boom Town
If a dog walker short shrifts his bowwow by ten minutes and no human is there to see it, is he still an asshole? Boomer, a blue-eyed husky mix, will not answer this question. In fact, Boomer will not implicate anyone who is willing to take him on a walk. Some days, he goes so far as to fake exhaustion to convince his humans that the walker wore him out. Never mind if the walker merely strolled him round a magnolia and let him sniff the neighbor’s gate.
On a recent Monday, Boomer’s humans arrived home at 12:20 and found Boomer massacring imaginary squirrels in his bed. The walker’s note read as follows:
Pet Name: Boomer
Pick Up Time: 12:00
Drop Off time: 12:30
#1 : x
#2:
Comments:
The only thing missing in the “comments” section was, “I am a pathological liar”.
Sharing Boomer’s blind allegiance to the walker, his humans attributed the error to “pre-writing the walk notes”; deeming the walker both blameless and incredibly efficient. Then, they swatted Boomer out of his bed and instructed him to walk himself for ten minutes.
Perhaps the walker in your mind is a shy teenage dog-lover trying to raise money for veterinary school. If so, delete that naive picture and begin again. This walker drives a new car, has designer male highlights, and talks on his i-phone while Boomer tries valiantly to turn him into a sled.
If you need more ammunition, here it is: the man makes twenty dollars a “walk”.
What an asshole.
Yeah, what an asshole. I feel bad for Boomer. On a happier note, your writing is right on target. The tone, the pacing, the voice – they’re all great.
A fun little rant. This is something you could develop easily — go to one of these places, tell us about the come-on, all the assurances and the effort to make you think that they not only LOVE your pet but are prepared to perform these upscale services in a way that will make you feel that you are a bona fide member of the haute bourgoisie. I see it now, the wicked investigative report that shows how the petcare folks have played to our vanities . . . the Emperor’s new clothes, sort of.
Ha, reading this made me very afraid because I need to hire a dog walker for Thanksgiving… the one I’m looking at charges a “$5″ holiday fee… asshole is right.
Eliot – I think your writing is great. There should be more space out there besides the New Yorker for this kind of prose. Maybe you should turn this into a Talk of My Town, semi-publication. If you took submissions, and published one a week (or a day, depending) I’d definitely circulate this into some of my daily reading. It’s such a nice break.