Today, Annie was roaming around the house, harrassing the elderly and destroying items of value, when I realized I had to go downtown to the Bank. The Bank is a block from my house, so of course, I decided to drive. Without thinking through the decision as clearly as I should have, I picked her up to take her along for the ride.

Upon arrival, I realized no one else was parked outside the building. This is not unusual. On Mondays, businesses here are closed and main street is deserted. I lifted her out and dropped her to the ground, and without so much as looking over her shoulder, she ran at full tilt in the opposite direction. I watched her pounding buttocks disappear down the street for a moment, thought of running to catch her, and thought better of it. I turned on my heel to go into the building. As I anticipated, she soon realized I had not followed, and with a tight turn, returned at equal speed and caught up as I climbed the concrete stairs.

As she squirted between my feet, I opened first the outside glass door, then the inside, and she rocketed into the lobby ahead of me in scrambling bounds. There were no customers, and she galloped directly to the first person she saw, a blonde and amicable bank teller, and barking furiously, informed her to ready herself for my $12 deposit. As the other teller is also blond and amicable, her greeting was recieved with good humour.

Obviously pleased with herself, she gave one last bevy of barks and making a wild circle behind the tellers' counter, launched a a glorious dash back through the open door, much like Buffalo Bill riding into a Wild West Show in a cloud of dust and gunsmoke, rearing his horse, and galloping headlong to the exit to end the show...

The doorway was not open. It was the same floor length glass door I had so carefully opened for her 15 noisy seconds earlier. I watched her body flying before me in slow motion, stretching and coiling and accelerating in a race towards the immutable laws of physics.

10 pounds of 4 month old puppy catapulted nosefirst into the clean, hard glass. A nanosecond later, the dignfied room exploded with screams that a victim of the Spanish Inquisition would have been hard pressed to surpass. It took me three seconds of eternity to catch her, and when I did, all I could manage was to close my hand over her wide open, wailing mouth, muffling her as effectively as a cashmere sweater would an air raid siren.

My bank manager was in her office. The closed door was no match for Annie's bloodcurdling operatic performance, and as it swung open in panic, I saw to my horror that she was *on the phone*. The alarm had already been transmitted to another Bank down the long end of the telephone wire.

I left before the swat team arrived.

copyright 2000, Catherine McMillan