I’ve started walking my dog down the middle of the street because otherwise I wouldn’t walk my dog at all.
Over the decades I’ve had half a dozen dogs, and this one, Sweetie, is the absolute easiest dog to walk, and also the most aggravating. She strolls along, leash a-dragging for the most part, and she stops faithfully at corners and intersections.
That’s the good stuff.
The bad stuff is one great big bad stuff: Sweetie can’t walk and elevate her nose at the same time. Like all dogs, but more so, Sweetie is nothing but four legs and a snout.
She can smell anything and everything at the same time, but only if her nostrils are a quarter-inch off the ground and buried in something other than pavement. Hence the “walking my dog down the middle of the street” opening line.
If we walk on the sidewalk we don’t. Walk on the sidewalk, I mean. Instead we (I) stand on the sidewalk while my dog inventories every scent, smell, stain, stink, fragrance and odor that has taken place within that square foot of earth over the past six weeks.
Meanwhile I’m still standing, leaning at a 45-degree angle away from her, with the leash straining between my tight fist and her tight collar, a pose she could hold for many minutes because less than two inches away is another aromatic adventure: a cigarette butt!
What would ordinarily be a 10 minute walk around the block turns into, if I allow it, a 10 minute walk to the next driveway unless there’s the unexpected delight of cat urine to inhale along the way. If so, please add six minutes to the average arrival time at the corner of South Hayne Street and Talleyrand Avenue. Arrival time is only an estimate; your time may vary depending on whether you are walking a Dachshund or a Golden Retriever.
(While on the topic of walking your pooch, why doesn’t somebody invent a dog bag that has little tab on the side? Once loaded with excrement, just pull the tab and the bag inflates with helium and floats away.)
BACK TO THE STORY: We live in a small town in North Carolina and there’s not much early traffic on neighborhood streets. I take Sweetie out every morning and follow a similar route every day. If I allowed her to set the pace we’d hit rush hour.
I can’t yell at her because it’s not nice and the neighbors would frown. I can’t pull her around the streets in a little red wagon because I don’t have one and she’s too big.
But if I walk her down the middle of the paved streets she cannot easily be distracted by the heavenly stench of one horrid stink or another. Or both. While a freshly mown lawn offers merely the tantalizing tang of newly cut grass, an unkempt, weedy old vacant lot yields an entire afternoon’s worth of sniffing. And sniffing and sniffing and sniffing.
Think of it: bird droppings next to a Taco Bell wrapper, not far from two empty beer cans and the rapturous reek of a long-dead possum that, with a little luck, Sweetie will roll in.
Next, an empty Doritos bag that Sweetie attacks with admirable zest. Ten seconds later she’s wearing it on her head while gnawing on a chicken bone that juts from her clenched teeth at a most fetching angle.
At this rate I’m going to have to shave again; I wish I’d packed a lunch.
HONESTY, AT A MINIMUM
The Ukiah Valley Water Authority (UVWA) is quietly planning to stun those of us who utilize “water” on a regular basis by increasing the price to it by a lot. A real lot.
A series of water hikes begins March 1. Ukiah’s will go up a “modest” 18% while other districts, (Hello there, Willow, Redwood Valley and Millview!) will take a 54% shot to both the jaw and wallet; Calpella’s will jump 36% on top of a 15% increase in 2025.
These numbers come courtesy of No Ukiah Annexation (NUA) a group of local volunteers who seem to have thwarted the city’s poorly conceived and mostly camouflaged plan(s) to annex a sizable percentage of Mendocino County.
But maybe not. As NUA warns “These (water increase) proposals do not exist in isolation. Over the past two years the city of Ukiah has repeatedly pursued strategies to expand its authority over surrounding communities, first through large scale annexation proposals . . . and now more quietly through the UVWA.
“There is a clear pattern of consolidating control over regional infrastructure and imposing disproportionate costs on unincorporated areas, creating financial pressure that makes annexation appear inevitable.”
For whom do city officials work? What are their plans? Why don’t these officials explain, in simple words for stupid citizens, their long term goal?
TWK takes the credit, or else the blame, for the weekly “Assignment: Ukiah” columns. Tom Hine does nothing except cash the checks.
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