Advice from the unwise

Well, the walk I had with Nattie this afternoon was interesting. Despite walking on the other side of a nearby street to the location of the Ten-Year-Old Anti-Angels ^[1], I still managed to get an earful of their noise, the more I hear of them, the more I want to print out that article and put it in their letter box, not that it is likely to help, but it would relieve the frustration a bit.

Also on the walk, some lunatic who decided to be an animal health expert for the minute gave some less than useful advice. This all occured while Nattie was sniffing a tree, as she does, and as is natural for dogs to do. This bloke was walking nearby and called out “It’ll get sick if you let it sniff things….pull it away”, I ignored him. Nattie was just about finished with the tree and was doing a bit of ground scratching, which she does occasionally, and most dogs do…what I mean by “ground scratching” is scratching the ground and kicking up a bit of dirt, this seemed to be an opportunity for the loony, who was now further away, to provide more advice “It’s just marking territory, pull it away”.

There was nothing odd about the tree, but there was about the advice provider. For someone offering animal health advice, he wasn’t particularly healthy himself…appearing to be somewhat agitated and under the influence of something, alcohol or otherwise, and littering the ground with orange peels. Eating the orange could be the only thing he had going for him…if he had ever eaten it…he just peeled it and looked at it. Whilst I can’t confirm it, he was certainly heading in the direction of an area notorious for drug dealers, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was going there.

I must wonder what he thinks dogs do? He certainly doesn’t understand what happens when you take dogs for walks. Walks are not only good excersise for dogs, they also provide an opportunity for them to investgate and explore the area, and due to their extremely good sense of smell, this means sniffing things.

He, on the other hand, should refrain from sniffing or inhaling whatever it is he sniffs or inhales.

Samuel