Friday, September 07, 2012

Garbage Truck

I've had Max for 6 years now. (He's 6 1/2 now)
We went for our normal walk around one of the buildings on Saturday morning. My apartment is in the back corner of the complex, so we walk toward the the front office and round one of the buildings along the courtyard/pool area. Then we loop around along the driveway back to the house. It's usually pretty uneventful aside from a rabbit or frog encounter here and there. Mostly it's serene because we are both trying to wake up. 
 
On this morning, we were walking like normal toward the office when he stopped and I thought he might have spotted a rabbit so I tried to focus and didn't see anything. I did, on the other hand, hear the garbage truck coming into the complex. ...it was still on the street and hadn't gotten inside the gates. At 7am it's pretty noisy. Max sniffed, stood very still...then after looking toward the sound and back at me a couple of times, he walked quickly back to me. He was at the top of the hill and I wasn't going in that direction, so I just thought he was coming back to join me. 
 
Then he kept walking, pretty much pulling me back to my apartment. He wasn't in an all out run, but he might as well have been. He was really tugging. 
 
As we crossed the street/drive back to my building, I saw the garbage truck emptying the dumpster at the front of the complex. Max led be right back to my front door. He had pulled the retractable leash the full length, about 12 feet. When I made it into the breezeway, his nose was about an inch from the door - he was so eager to go in. 
 
I saw a little worry on his face. Kind of a "we have to get inside NOW!" kind of look. It wasn't what I would call so much fear that his tail was between his legs, but pretty close. He had a look of dread really. 
 
Being a "mom", I thought I'd let him see what the big scary thing was...well, by that time it was passing my breezeway, so he got a really good look at a HUGE blue garbage truck! Not exactly a good idea. He got his butt back to the door and waited for me to let him in. 
At first, I thought he would bolt into the safety of his house when I got the leash off, but he didn't. He just really needed to get inside the house. 
 
He didn't even do his business.