H is for ...

I asked for suggestions for a topic for H on my Facebook page and received a whole variety of suggestions:

Hygiene

Hippies

Hillbilly

• Historiography. (Yeah, no. That sounds like work.)
• Hieroglyphics. (Interesting. But also sounds like work.)
• Hatter, Mad. (A possibility. But the kazoo band at work (named for the Mad Hatter) has ticked me off today so no go on that one.)
• Ham chuckles!!!! (Nice one, Sheri.)
• Hygiene. (Mental or physical?)
• Horseshit.
• Hemorrhoid.
• Horrific.
• Horrible.
• Horror movie.
• Hillbilly.
• Hit me with your rhythm stick, hit me, hit me! (The previous 7 suggestions were all by Gary Rith, who is a little too excited about the Letter H today, I think.)
• Hopscotch (Physical effort? Not happening today.)
• Horticulture (You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think! Ha!)
•  This reminds me of when I was a teacher and a boy called a girl the "h word". After several questions I asked him to write it down. He wrote "hore." (This also reminded me of when I was teaching and I subbed for a 5th grade teacher named Mrs. Hoare. Seriously? How did she survive with that name around fifth graders???)
• Hematomas. (This entry, along with hygiene, hemorrhoid and the next one made me think medical matters are too much on some of your minds.)
• Hove. (This is the singular of 'hives' my friend and I decided.)
• Home or house (This may be a bit too sincere for me to tackle today.)
• Hippies (Got stuck walking behind a couple in handmade clothes of dubious quality and workmanship who stank of patchouli when I was downtown yesterday. I think I have to pass on this one.)
• Handi-wipes (Intriguing. But I'm not sure how far I could take it.)
  

But the winning topic turns out to be inspired by someone who didn't even offer a suggestion.

H is for... hot dogs.

Kieran and George-
aren't they cute?

My cousin Kieran posted today that her dog, George, decided to run off for the third time this week. So she, her sister and her brother and her brother's friend go into the woods to find him. They ran through pricker bushes barefoot until they found him, got a leash on him and all four of them were walking him, yet George could still pull them all down the road."It was fun allll three times," she said sarcastically. And a few weeks earlier, she posted, "Just went on a wild dog chase through the woods trying to catch up to my dog who was chasing a deer.Thank god Andrea used her track skills to do hardcore parkore over branches and catch my dog. Too bad we both got stung by the same bee in the head."

Me and Murphy, in a rare moment of holding still

Kieran, I feel your pain. My childhood dog, Murphy, was an escape artist extraordinaire. If he saw the tiniest window of opportunity, he'd bolt. We all learned to answer the door with our knees locked like our bladders were about to burst. But no matter what preventative measures we took, Murphy would get out and run wild throughout town. When this happened, our parents would slap some enticing treat into my brother Kevin's and my hands, give us his leash and send us out into the neighborhood to retrieve him. He wouldn't come when called (well, he'd get within a few feet of you and dart away as soon as you grabbed. He thought that was damn good sporting fun.) so you had to lure him close enough that one of you could snap the leash on him and end his freedom run. What worked best to coax my wild dog? Well, steak or some kind of raw game probably would've been most successful. But we had processed meats.

Okay, not much relevance to the story, but I almost peed
I laughed so hard when I found this image. WTH???

Yep. A handful of hot dogs or palms-full of bologna. Now, put yourself in our shoes for a moment. Start out with a good measure of worry, because dogs get hit by cars and while Murphy certainly had more street smarts than my two dogs do now even put together, the odds of a dog out on the streets on his own are not good. Throw in a little panic because time is of the essence, because mofo can RUN. Faster than you'd think a little guy who never went over 17 pounds could. So a lot of the times that we were out on these retrieval missions, we were barefoot as well. (See Kieran, I told you I felt your pain!) 

Anxious, panicked, barefoot, and with fistfulls of hot dogs. Most people avoid touching hot dogs with their bare hands, and not just for hygiene reasons (See, I worked yours in there, David!) They feel incredibly, grossly, smoothly weird. And they leave a processed meat smell on your skin that doesn't ever really come out. It's sort of like skunk; it stays embedded in your nostrils for weeks after. 

Imagine this, but with weiners.

Not to mention the sheer elegance, the undeniable coolness of racing around town with no shoes on chasing after a taunting dog with a handful of weiners. My brother knew Murphy's escapes worried me; he'd try to cheer me up and make me laugh. Usually by juggling the hot dogs. Or shuffling them, pretending to do magic tricks with them. It would've made Oscar Mayer proud.

So, H is for hot dogs. And even though, unfortunately, I have no photographs of my brother and I armed for pet retrieval thusly, I do have the most awesome hot dog picture ever taken- Charlotte Doyle, asleep on her mother's back, refusing to let go of that hot dog clenched in her tiny fist, even through unconsciousness: