Animal encounters-Inka & Novak

Inka.  My stepdaughter is a major fan of northern breed dogs.  While she was in high school we became a foster home for Samoyeds and occasionally other northern breed dogs.  Samoyeds are sled dogs and they don't do well unless they get a lot of exercise.  My stepdaughter and I took the foster dogs on hour-long walks almost every day of the year.  If there was downpour or a blizzard outside we worked them in the basement.  It was great exercise for us.  I lost 20 pounds and kept it off for three years, until we gave up the fostering.  Inka was the first of our foster dogs and the only one we adopted.  One year we took Inka to see the Fourth of July fireworks.  Big mistake.  We picked a spot as far away from the fireworks as we could get and still be in the park, but Inka broke her leash and ran as soon as the first fireworks went off.  I ran after her, but she was across a bridge and almost out of sight before I took three steps.  My wife says that all she could see of Inka was a white streak, followed at a great distance by me.  I appeared to be running in slow motion.  Inka probably ran the mile and a half back to our house in three or four minutes.  It took me over twenty minutes to get there, extract Inka from the deepest, darkest corner of the rosebush and give her what seemed like a gallon of water.

Novak: Foster dogs tend to be dogs with problems.  Some of the ones we got had been abused or neglected.  Some of them were escape artists.  One of the escape artists was a beautiful, healthy male Siberian Husky we called Novak.  He was our last foster dog.  Novak had pale blue eyes, and he yodeled instead of barking most of the time.  When he did bark it sounded like he was trying to imitate a bark and not quite getting it.  Novak was a good-tempered dog, playful and friendly.  Unfortunately he ran away anytime he got a chance.  Our fence couldn't hold him.  He could get under it or jump over it.  One time he got out at ten o'clock at night.  At ten-thirty the local adult book and novelty shop called.  “We've got your dog.”  So I went into the Paperback Grotto and 10:45 at night and retrieved Novak.  I hope nobody from the church or school saw me go in or come out.

That actually wasn't my most embarrassing experience with Novak.  The local Petco used to let people bring their dogs in and walk them up and down the aisles.  I did that with Novak one rainy evening.  Usually he was okay in Petco, but not this time. First, he marked a bag of dogfood.  I took him over to one of the employees to let her know what had happened.  Unfortunately, the employee was standing in front of a huge aquarium full of crickets.  As I went up to her, Novak ran the end of his leash and flailed his legs in the air when he hit the end of the leash.  His legs knocked the aquarium over.  It broke, and suddenly a river of crickets was flowing in both directions from it.  As I tried to apologize for that disaster, Novak lunged again.  This time he just knocked down a large fishbowl, which also broke.  I hastily took him out to the car, then went in to pay for the damage.  That was Novak's last trip to the Petco.