Brady’s daycare provider called mid-day this week and asked us to pick him up because he was sick. I was stuck in meetings for a few hours so Susan took him at first, but she had afternoon meetings so at 3 I picked him up at her office and headed home with him.

There were two immediate problems. The first was that we often park the car at his daycare provider and walk since it’s about 1/2 mile or so to work and is a good opportunity for some exercise most days. The second is that I also had Soolin. This meant I had to walk a half mile with the boy while wrangling to dog and carrying my briefcase and  Brady’s diaper bag. Brady’s been getting heavier and it’s not easy carrying him that far anymore – when Susan and I do it we trade off now as we each tire, or I put him on my shoulders, which I couldn’t do with the dog and the bags. Still, it wasn’t impossible, plus the good news was, he hadn’t been throwing up since Susan picked him up.

Things went more or less ok for half the walk. Soolin did her occasional ‘Squirrel!! Pull, pounce!’ action (the campus is overrun with squirrels) but I’m used to it. What I wasn’t used to was managing his weight for this long, and I soon began to tire. Plus both bags were constantly slipping off my shoulders. I felt like I was doing a slow motion juggle. The problems really started though when Soolin decided she had to poop. We’re responsible dog owners and always pick up after her, but I couldn’t figure out what to do with Brady while I cleaned up. I finally settled on plopping him down on the sidewalk while taking care of Soolin’s business. Several things, none good, suddenly happened at once. Brady set off towards Soolins poop as soon as I put him down. Soolin saw a cat or squirrel and decided to bolt. I saw happening in slow motion, paralyzed. I settled on grabbing Brady, and watched in horror as Soolin’s lead dragged through her poop, completely fouling it.

aigh! Picture me now very angry, trying hard not to show it to Brady, while attempting to get Soolin under verbal control. She’s usually a well behaved dog, but she was irrepressible – every time I got her in a down, as soon as I turned away, up she would pop, dragging her foul lead around. She took a fair bit of verbal abuse from me while I finished cleaning up her mess. I then took a dog poop bag and wore it as a glove, grabbed her lead with this, and tried to continue on to the car. Of course Brady spied the bag as glove and went all ‘ooh, what do you have there Dad, I really want that!!!’, wriggling and bouncing and exclaiming and complaining as I wriggled myself to keep it from his grasp, all while still trying to keep the two bags (briefcase and diaper) from sliding off my shoulder into the poop lead, and trying to keep Soolin from pulling towards whatever it was she had spotted.

Thus went the rest of my walk to the car. It *sucked*. The only good news is that Brady never managed to grab anything, and amazingly I managed to keep the pooplead from touching anything.

(except for Susan. Later that night when she came home, she came in holding the poop lead, and asked ‘why was this hanging outside?’ She wasn’t too pleased that I hadn’t warned her).