The Things We Try Even Though There Isn't Any Damn Way

Picture of Emmy
Tonight, just after my husband arrived home, we decided to head for the park with two dogs and a toddler in tow. Olivia has finally learned to walk by herself and it took about ten minutes to pass two houses just to get to the park with the two dogs wanting to walk a million miles a minute while the toddler was well, toddling along behind – slowly.

At the park, Stephane headed over to the tennis court on site. He had the great idea for all of us to go inside, lock ourselves in and let the dogs and baby run free, uninhibited. After a few minutes, my husband gets the crazy idea that our dog, Emmy, who is a Labrador/Greyhound mix, can intuitively, if challenged, jump over the tennis court net, just like a poodle would do jumping through a hoop.

Now we all know how high a tennis court net is (unless you’ve been living under a rock all your life), and we all know that even for us to get over a tennis court net, we have to walk up to it, slowly put one leg over and then manipulate our other leg over, all while balancing ourselves and not falling over. So how is a medium size dog that took me a whole year just to train to sit, going to find the ambition to suddenly jump over a tennis court net, and the second question is, why?

But in any case, my husband felt she would do it. So he ran around the tennis net to the other side, called her, and then she came bounding toward him, went to the side where she could walk through between the two nets, and arrived next to him. Wagging her tail and happy as a clam.

“See I told you she wouldn’t do it. She’s not that dumb.”

“No, I think she will.”

So he ran again over to the other side of the net, yelled for her to come, and just like before, she ran around and met him there again. Wagging her tail, happy as a clam.

“How many times are you going to try this?”

But my words mean nothing when my husband is trying to prove something. After several times, he had Emmy, Daisy, and our toddler, Olivia, all coming to him when he called only now all three of them were walking to the end of the net and going through the opening of the two side by side tennis courts. Even Olivia, who just turned 15 months, was smart enough to know it would be a lot easier to follow the dogs and walk around than to try to jump over the tennis court net like “daddy” was proposing. There was no jumping the net for any of the three.

So I give my husband credit, because he tried, but even if he put two dog biscuits and a baby teething biscuit on the other side, there wasn't any damn way, any of them was even remotely considering jumping that tennis court net. But the good thing is that he tired them out with walking several times around that tennis court and right now, all three are sound asleep so I can write this. Now that’s progress.