War of the Leash

Walking my dogs was hard work. Not only were there two of them, but they were big and strong. They knew the leash meant freedom from the backyard. I would get pushed to my limits. They would drag so hard they’d be choking themselves, front paws flailing in the air. Getting them to heel was always a losing battle, but one consistent fight for dominance will never leave my mind: The cows.

 

In my neighborhood, there used to be a cow field. It was next to the church and had a chain link fence dividing it from the parking lot. The cows did nothing but eat grass all day long. I remember once when one of them actually came over and almost ate grass from my hand. It sniffed my bundle, turned its nose up, and walked away. Ungrateful, picky cow!

 

My dogs had differing opinions about the cows. Girl Dog thought every other animal was her friend. She would just stare vapidly in their general direction, wagging her tail. Then she’d get bored and sniff at small circles of dead grass. (So fascinating, animal urine is.) 

Boy Dog, on the other hand, was anti-social. He wanted to destroy everything that wasn’t human or Girl Dog. The cows were his special enemy.

Every time I walked my dogs, we would pass by the cows. Boy Dog’s tantrum would come first. It would begin as a series of frustrated “turkey gobbles” and end up as blood-thirsty screeching. Repeated attacks against the fence soon followed; he’d jump, smash his face against the chain link, throwing his head back and forth. The cows kept eating.

It took all my strength to pry Boy Dog from his tantrum-fence. All he wanted to do was kill those cows. If he ever did somehow manage to get past the fence, he’d never actually be able to achieve cow-murder. One kick from those beef machines would’ve been enough to end his tantrums forever. Yet he tried. Every. Single. Walk.  He wasn’t the brightest four-legged stinker.

 

These incidences might not have been so bad if they weren’t usually paired with another bit of horribleness: Cow poop. I had to avoid stepping in any whilst Boy Dog dragged me around during his freak-outs. I’ll never know how those cows managed to get it on our side of the fence in perfect, soft-serve piles. There were usually around five-ten of these massive globs sitting, undisturbed, on the grass that borders the fence and parking lot. 

It’s as if the cows left their enclosure just for the pleasure of leaving their dumps in a place where humans could admire them. 

 But that’s not what I remember most about the poop.

If the cows weren’t close enough to the fence as a distraction, my dogs would beeline for those mounds of muck. I would always pull my hardest on the leash trying to stop what I knew was coming, but I was like a rag doll. When they knew there was cow poop around, their strength was unrivaled.

The result was inevitable. 

My dogs would eat it. They loved it. They ate it like it was a prized delicacy. Plunging their snouts in that glorious buffet, they wouldn’t even bother chewing. They especially liked the mature manure; piles that were crusted over with goopy insides. (It must have tasted better medium-rare.) I would fruitlessly pull the leash and beg them to stop. “Don’t eat that! That’s not healthy for you! What is wrong with you?”

The feasting would go on until either all the poops were gone, or they had eaten so much that they started to vomit. I was powerless against their intense desires for cow excrement. And there were new piles every time I walked the dogs. I hated those cows.

When they would finish licking their stained faces, they would continue the walk like nothing was wrong. They’d even lick me after.

And I let them.