Last Thanksgiving started off with a bang at our house…well, actually, with a shout. I was still asleep upstairs when Mark, up early to peel potatoes, woke me with a call for help. “Honey, the dog got out!”
I was out of bed in a flash. Greyhounds will take off like lightning and run straight into trouble or traffic, the Greyhound Pets of Orlando folks had warned us when we adopted Toby. The sweet ex-racers love to run, but have the survival skills of an eggplant. We swore that we’d never let Toby off-leash outside of our fenced yard. Too fast to catch, he’d be hell-bent for destruction on nearby Howell Branch Road. Just seeing Toby’s mad dash to his leash if he heard its slightest jingle — a walk! a walk! — was a daily reminder to keep our leggy loony from getting outside on his own.
But we’d had workers at the house the day before. I had practically begged them to make sure they secured the gate to our fenced back yard when they left, but I hadn’t double checked. Turns out they’d left it open. Now, Toby had turned his safe backyard prance into a Thanksgiving tour of the neighborhood. I made it downstairs in time to see Mark run across the yard dressed in a T-shirt and sleep boxers, carrying an open jar of peanut butter and rattling a box of dog biscuits.
I paused to ponder our next move. Wake the kids? Drive around to search? We had promised to call Greyhound Pets if Toby ever got away. Did I really have to do that? Oh, the shame of it, and to have to call on Thanksgiving! And what about all this food we needed to cook?
Then Mark came back with an idea. “The leash,” he said, grabbing it and heading back outside. Moments later, he returned with one panting greyhound.
“He ran right to it,” said Mark with a grin. We savored the irony that morning and we are still enjoying it today. Here was Toby, running free in the outside world, but he ran right to the leash, certain that its jingle signaled his chance to run free in the outside…whoops!
As a card-carrying “slice-of-life” essay writer, I am required to draw your attention to the whopper of a metaphor in this story. Here it is: Don’t we all sometimes do exactly what Toby did — that is, run eagerly, repeatedly, to something that will trap or limit us?
It’s a thought to keep in mind as the jingle of the holidays prompts conditioned behaviors in most Americans. Like Toby, maybe we need to look around and realize that we already have what we are frantically trying to get! May the jingles that beckon you this season be bells of freedom and joy. And as always, thanks so much for reading!