Doggy detox

I've been a bad, bad dog. First Coun. Dog (sic. hah.) Thompson hires trappers to run me outta Dodge - um, okay, Greely. They catch a couple of my slower eastern brethren and bring down all manner of vigilante doofuses (doofi?) on moi's frisky tail.

Okay, I know it's gettin' hot. I scoot the Top Sekrit Furtress of Solitude over to Richmond. Where, suddenly, like, Coun. Jan Harder jumps onto the anti-coyote bandwagon and gets all, like, "you are so not allowed here, either!" What's wrong with these people? Don't they know that a semi-mythical coyote on a heavy chocolate jag is uncatchable?

It's not all bad. A small, vocal pro-coyote lobby is spamming the Petfinder, explaining that ya don't leave small pets and food outside, unsupervised, for long periods in semi-rural areas. (Letters with pix of highly photogenic Alberta coyotes... Yoohoo! Over here, mister shutterguy!) Others kindly and correctly note there's way more than one kind of rural predator checking out the daily specials on the menu. And wonder exactly who's unbalancing the ecology more here, anyway, coyotes or people? I have my opinions.

Still, despite the joy of a good chase, certain of the Irregulars worry. When they finally catch up to me Saturday night, snarfing Hershey's on the curb outside the Mac's on Gladstone, the IO suggests I've been really pissy lately. The Short Guy says I should lay off the chocolate and let my kidneys recover. Aggie fixes me with a gimlet eye -- maybe two, hard to tell because she's a teensy bit unfocused -- and urges me to get the hell out of town and lay low for my own good. A spa retreat, I ask? A nunnery? Hopefully...

Nope. This is intervention, big-time. Those rat bast... ummmmm, friends, concerned for my safety and well-being... jump me and slam me into a travel crate. And ship me to detox. In Sudbury. Here, I languish, jonesing in a lockdown facility. Coyotes have no pockets in which to smuggle in their chocolate stashes. Grim.

It's not all whacks on the nose with newspapers, though. I'm apparently recovering in record time. Heh. The counsellors (No nuns in sight. None.) are very impressed with my progress. If I'm a good dog, they'll let me go on the field trip to the nickel mine. If I'm a really good dog, they might persuade the tour guides to let me spell out my name in glowing slag... and how cool is that?