What?

When Sage and I were out running yesterday morning we heard some woman calling, calling, and calling her dog while walking in Golden Gardens.  The calls increased in decibels and ferocity.  I smiled hearing this, thinking about all the times when Murphy would turn off her hearing aid and stare at me, from a good 20 or more yards.  What?  Are you talking to me?

Labs are, among other things, the very best con artists.  Those big brown eyes, soft floppy ears, big brown noses, convince you of their gentle nature.  And heck, they guide blind people, surely they must all be well behaved?  As many of us know from reading  Marley and Me, labs are independent, stubborn (which is why they are used as guide dogs) and hard of hearing.

When Murph was young and we still lived in New York, I would run with her in the morning, then throw ball for her before I left for work.  My hope was that I tired her out.  On weekends I would take her to the large ball fields on the SUNY Purchase campus.  There were several fields, each separated by a swale, or drainage ditch.  Murphy and I soon began to see other dog regulars.  

One Saturday, out of the corner of her eye, she saw a man with two Dalmations.  He was two football fields away, but Murph made a break away and was greeting the dogs within seconds.  Of course, echoing off the empty fields were my increasingly emphatic calls.  Murphy, come.  Murphy, come.  MUUUURPHY COME HERE RIGHT NOW!!!!

  

She stared, wagged her tail, and started the pump fake motion that labs do when they are trying to play with another dog.  Of course, I had to jog over, clip on Murphy's leash, apologize to the other dog owner for interrupting his meticulous training operation he was conducting, and walk back toward the car, explaining to Murphy that when I call she should, believe it or not, come.  If our conversation was a cartoon, I could see my dialogue balloon going in one of her ears and out the other.

Fortunately, in our 14 years together, Murphy has been pretty good about coming.  The several times the gates have been left open she has not left the yard.  She knows, I hope, that she has it pretty darn good.  Now she wanders mostly because she gets on a scent, but still, if she sees a dog, her brain has that memory moment where she sees herself, bee-lining across green fields, leaping drainage ditches, eager for a romp.  She ambles over, gives a sniff, and lets the other dogs pay her homage.  After all, she is Murphy, Queen of Turning Off the Hearing Aid.

Murphy's day.