Two 3.6-mile city rides.
Last night dusk was falling before I walked Inga, so we stayed on 16th and only walked to East High and back; yesterday I went immediately after work and so we walked around the lake in the park again. She is a very polite dog, gently accepting a treat from your fingers, sitting calmly to be leashed, sitting immediately after but one command, and not pulling on the lead.
That is, until yesterday, when she suddenly darted to one side and grabbed--some bark? what could she be so enthusiastic about in bark?--no, a fish someone must have pulled from the lake and later discarded. It wasn't very smelly, but it was old to have, I saw with distaste as she chomped, a maggot squirm from the slitted guts.
She does not know, or chose not to obey, "drop" or "leave it" or "out," though she sat immediately upon command. Dogs eat nasty crap, I know, but I prefer them to do it when their owners are home to let them out if they need to heave or loose their bowels and when I am not responsible for them. I squirted her in the face with my water bottle, and she looked at me reprovingly and held to her fish.
(Oh damn, for the first time I thought of Tony Markarios and his fish after he lost Ratter.)
I was reluctant to use force, because I didn't know if, with this delicacy of dead trout, she might snap. But I straddled her, gripping her shoulders with my knees, and gripped a jaw in each hand, pressing her lips against her teeth. That might not be the best way to get a dog to open her mouth, but it worked, and she didn't growl a bit. I praised her, but does a dog care about hearing "Good dog!" from people not her own? She lunged for the fish between her paws as soon as I released her head, and that was a near thing as I had not yet grabbed her leash again, but I won. She pulled as I hauled her away, but she forgot or at least stopped trying in less than thirty feet.
At least she doesn't try to lap up Canada goose shit. We couldn't go to the park at all if that were the case.
Better than The Manticore because I didn't dislike the narrator, and because Magnus Eisengrim's story is more important to the question of the Deptford trilogy--who killed Boy Staunton?--than David Staunton's. Also better because while Magnus was the main speaker, as I expected, Dunstan Ramsay set up the framing narrative, and I adored him.
I envy, as well as doubt, Davies's characters' ability to spin an unrehearsed yarn without backtracking because, having reached one point, he realizes he omitted a vital other point earlier.