The Dog Walking Days Of Summer

I figured out something this morning. I don’t know why it came to me in the haze of the early morn but now that I have this idea in my head I am doomed to ponder it all week. You see I can’t really enjoy the weekends like I use to as it’s my turn to walk the puppy on Saturday and Sunday. It’s not that I mind but well here’s my thought.

Remember Wing Commander Prophecy? There was some good stuff there, a lot better than the movie that’s for sure, with Mark Hamil and Malcolm McDowell. But to get to that feeder bar pellet you had to do some pretty inane missions. Here’s where I am going today with this dog walking thing.

Walking my dog in 100-degree heat is essentially like one long escort mission. Depending on who does more not want to be in the heat it can shift the role between me and the dog being Carrier and Fighter. If it is morning then I am the Carrier. Benji roams all over zooming from place to place. Yet he is always tethered to the slow moving Carrier. In the evening this can be somewhat reversed. He tends to want to investigate more and his pace slows. Now I am the one who is moving him along by knocking out obstacles that would slow him up from depositing his cargo.

This sad analogy gets worse of course. I realized after a month that we walked the exact same line on the exact same path. It’s like I was playing a top down rail shooter from the 80’s. River Raid for the Atari 2600 but with dogs dropping bombs on unsuspecting plant life that did nothing to incur his wrath. Which if you think about it would be the one line used on the back of the box to sell the game.

To brake up the repeat gameplay I fell back on another videogame standard. I put our walk into Mirror Mode. By that I mean we just went counterclockwise from our original circular path around the complex. And like Ridge Racer I noticed different objects from a new perspective when I approached them from this new angle.

And Mom said videogames had no lasting influences on life. Ha!