The Activated Boy
13-May-2019
While hobbling around on three legs proved easy enough for the dog, standing on his hind legs and jumping in circles was harder.
It could be said that many years had passed. If that was true or not, it is hard to say. A dog’s conception of time is very different from a person’s after-all. But it was true that the dog was no longer a puppy; in fact, he looked completely different now. And maybe that is to be expected, because a grown dog does looks different than a puppy.
In any case, it must be admitted that the lady’s apperance had changed drastically. She was no longer young, and in honesty, the years had not been kind: although many had seen her as beautiful, once, now few would say that.
Plus, less concealed by an alluring fascade, her inner ugliness was freer to exude outward; and in fact, it did just that.
But the dog had no sense of any of that. The woman’s beauty, or lack thereof, did not matter to the dog.
To the dog, the woman meant food, and that was it.
The passerbye’s still walked by of course. It was a busy thoroughfare where the dog sat with the lady after-all.
But most people did not stop to interact with the woman, or to watch the dog.
And because of this, for the most part the lady just ignored the dog completely.
For hours at a time the dog just layed next to the woman. But occassionally enought curiosity was aroused in a passerby to cause them to stop. And in such a case, they thus paused for a moment, looking at the woman and her dog.
And it was at those moments that the woman paid attention to the dog.
“Watch this!”, she said.
“Just look at my amazing dog! Even with his crushed paw, look at what he can do… run in cirlces, and jump up and down!”
And as she said this, the woman would pull morsals from her bag, and dange them above the dog.
Each time this happened, excitement would overtake the dog: as the woman dangled the morsals just out of reach, the dog would inevitably stand on his hind legs, jumping around and yipping, eventually snatching the morsal from the woman’s hand as the passerby dropped change into the woman’s basket.
Although it did last a long time, the arrangement described here did not last forever, however.
One day it all changed. And that was when the boy came back.
He wasn’t a boy anymore, actually, and he definitely no longer considered the woman to be beautiful.
But he did remember the dog, and recognized him immediately because of his crushed paw.
The woman? She didn’t recognize the boy at all. All she knew was that someone had stopped.
“Watch this!”, she said. “Just look at my amazing dog…”
Things unfolded predictably at this point, and excitement started to overtake the dog as the woman drew the morsal from her bag.
But the boy ignored her, and then did something that changed everything: instead of throwing some coins into the woman’s jar, the boy threw a piece of fish on the ground for the dog.
At that moment the dog stopped jumping, and quickly ate the fish.
The dog then looked expectedly at the boy, who by now had started to walk off.
Wondering if more fish would come, the dog began to follow the boy.
And so it was that the dog with the crushed paw hobbled off, never to be seen by the lady who was no longer beautiful, ever again.