Today's Cloud

Today on a walk I'd been revving Monster up pretty good with the tug toy. A little distance ahead of us a person left their house wearing a ginormous fur hat and carrying a backpack, to get into their car parked in the road. Monster fixated slightly on this, but we were still pretty far away and I judged that we could safely keep walking as the car would be long gone by the time we got there. Parked just ahead of us was another car, this one with tinted windows. As Monster was weaving around to find a good view of the weirdo (his word, not mine!) with the hunchback and the fuzzy head, he must have spotted our reflection in the dark windows of the car we were approaching and he switched focus. Suddenly, he wanted to rear up against this car and look inside - at the same Fur Hat had gotten into their car and was driving toward us. I veered out into the road away from the parked car Monster was focusing on, in order to pass it without leaving Monster claw gouges in it (I'm broke enough already, thank you). This meant we were trapped between the parked car and the passing car as Fur Hat drove by... The road could easily accommodate both dog and pedestrian, and passing car. Not so easy when the situation was Monster, Monstermom (I'm specifying myself as other than generic pedestrian, because clearly I'm exceptionally stupid!), and passing car.

Something is getting a talking to, right now!

Already wound up from our play, further tightened from the weirdo and the reflecting car, Monster had zero chance of not lunging for the car as it passed so close by us... Why did I do that? Why not just stop and wait for Fur Hat to pass before walking by the parked car? Even if Monster tends to get more reactive when asked to stay in one place (nothing to do, nowhere to put his focus), at least there would have been much more space. There was plenty of room to walk past the parked car while meeting another car. Not so much for trying to control a hundred pounds of lunging Monster.

Yeah, that car was cloooose... Why was that, Mom?

As per usual: I suck.