Dog Walk

This morning Martin said that he'd walk the dog.

Up the driveway that's a 20-minute jaunt. With dawdling kids, 30 minutes tops.

So off they went around 8:30 am. Martin with the chuckit (a tennis ball hurling device); the dog and her ball; Hadley, atop Bugsy; and Cayden, armed with his Nerf N-Strike Recon Dart-Blaster.

They returned. Two hours later.

The kids burst into the kitchen, naked from the waist down. ("The river was wet!" Cayden reported.)

Apparently they walked up the driveway, then cut through the woods, crossed the ridge, followed the berry trail, across the creek and down the muddy river slope. At one point Bugsy leapt across a rain-filled gully; the kids were riding tandem and miraculously managed to stay aboard.

And then they all climbed a deer stand by the river.

"All of you climbed the tree stand?" I asked. "What did you do with the pony?"

"I tied him to a tree," Martin said simply.

I'm glad that everyone survived the pilgrimage. The dog was exercised, the kids had fun. And it cost me only a load of laundry.

But Martin, let me pass along a piece of advice if there's a repeat performance: avoid tying a horse -- even one as saintly as Bugs -- to some sad sapling by the river.

The pony...and the tree..might not be there when you return.