Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Of Dogs in the Arts..

I am writing this in Word, while Betty and I are in the back woods in part of the Shenandoah National Forest. No internet means I have to write it and send (and transfer to the blog) when we do get a signal.
We are between shows, our last was in Richmond our next in Chantilly, and so we thought we would do R&R here. It is really quite and really dark outside. We are only 20 feet off the road the traffic is killing us. Since noon, there have been four vehicles. Three of those were traveling together; a “tower” crew, probably there will be cell service up here after a while.
At the last show in Richmond, we were the only campers in the Raceway campground that didn’t have a dog. I was outside talking with a couple of the other people doing the show, more and more showed up, each person or couple had a dog. A woman from a huge diesel pusher behind us showed up with the tiniest full-grown dog I’ve seen. She looked around and said aloud what I was already thinking, “Where’s your dog?”
I was feeling out of place like I was at a turkey shoot with no gun.
But that’s not why I write. In the camper next to our's was the nicest dog, which I thought was some sort of weird poodle. It had a nice personality, and barked each time it saw me but quickly made amends with a friendly sniff and lick. It was dark gray and black mottled, but the oddest thing was its ears. The dog was on the small side like a long legged cocker spaniel, but closely barbered. All except it’s ears. You couldn’t tell where the ear left off and the hair began. They were about 8 inches long including hair and stood right on end at nice symmetrical angles from each other.
Turns out it was a Schnauzer, pure breed, but without the ears cropped as they were supposed to be. When they told me I realized and should have known it all along. It was the same as two dogs friends of ours had owned, just incognito with the ear thing. The dog was bought cheap because it was no good for showing for some other reason, maybe it was too nice. Later..

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