I lived in France for a year in high school and that’s what my host father used to shout at the dog. A poodle, of course: small, black, curly, with a light, sort of squishy body that shook shook shook all the time, which was probably why yap yap yap all the time. Cookie could be made to look remarkably like a duck if you pressed her ears against her head. Quel canard! My father would say, which meant both What a duck! and What a joke!
The point of this being, I feel like Cookie today. I wish there was someone around to press my ears against my head, or at least pat my hair and say, Calm yourself.
So, yes, I don’t know what I’m doing here exactly, but I’m glad I started. What Cookie wanted to do most of all was run run run to the end of the yard and through the poodle-proof gate and along the bike path beside the canal, run like une folle, run totally berzerk, and be less squishy, and way less weird.
