DOG AND BEST FRIEND ON A WALK

I was watching a young woman walk across a field with her dog.

She let the dog off-leash. The dog enjoyed the freedom and darted off to the left at first. The young woman kept walking straight down a path in the field.

The dog dodged back and forth from one smell or one sight to another. The young woman kept walking along the path. The dog veered off to the right, to the left, sometimes a hundred yards or more from the path.

Every so often the dog would stop, stick its head up, ears perked up, look, catch sight of her, and adjust his wanderings back into her direction,

She kept walking straight. The dog was free to roam, to bounce around, to go this way and that.

The woman came to the end of the field. She stopped and turned toward the dog and called. At the sound, the dog alerted and ran straight toward her. She bent down and patted the dog for a few minutes.

Then they walked on together, the young woman and the dog, side-by-side.

Kind of like me, the dog was, at times in my life.