Friday, September 21st, 2012
Central Park East - 6:45am

Good morning! 

One of the things about walking your dog in the city is that they often find things in Park bushes that you'd rather not think about.  While there have certainly been worse things - this morning my dogs were rustling about and emerged with about a 6 inch long, half-munched hoagie roll.  I immediately pictured some toothless crackhead mowing down on this thing in the bushes before he went to sleep and so I told Sofie to drop it. 

She put her head down and turned away from me - not quite bold enough to run away, but definitely defiant.

"No, this thing is good, I'll turn away and maybe you'll forget I have it." 

While she was distracted by me, Bear swooped in for the kill and stole the bread away from her.  They don't call him Bold Bear for nothing.  He was not sheepish.  He looked me in the eye and ran away with his water-logged prize.  I tried to chase him down, but he just ran away.  I even tried to fool him into thinking that I had a treat for him - which he bought for a second - then bolted. 

He seemed bound and determined to carry it along so I eventually tired of chasing him. 

"It's just a hoagie roll - it's actually food - as opposed to some of the other things they've found." 

Eventually we were about to pass a woman with 2 big, chunky yellow labs. 

"This might sort itself out," I thought to myself.

Bingo.  Fat yellow lab #1 charged over and yanked the hoagie roll out of my little prince's defiant mouth.  Lady exclaimed, "No!" Then sort of gave me a little glare as fat yellow lab #1 gave two big chomps and swallowed the roll.  Bear sniffed round his mouth anxiously.... "Could there be just a crumb left I could eat?"  Nope.  I apologized to the lady for indirectly feeding her dog a water-logged homeless man's dinner and then went on my merry way. 

Bear forgot about it in about 2 seconds and went on with his task of scavenging under the Park benches for niblets.  And the fat lab? ....well I feel fairly certain that a hunk of bread is not the worst thing he's found laying about in the Park. 

Ah, the life of a city dog. 

Have a great day & HAPPY FRIDAY!