The Menacing Christmas Trees

My dog has a few quirks, as dogs do. He is massively prejudiced against people who do not look like perfect cardboard cutouts of people. So a hunchback is to be suspected of wrong doing , but so also is a parent with a baby strapped to their chest. Both present themselves to my dog's somewhat simple evaluations skills as aberrant in the extreme. People should not have lumps.

He is also very very distrustful of things that lie in wait. This time of year can be difficult for him, as the streets are literally teaming with an almost impossible to imagine evil; trees that lie on their sides poised to attack. We just returned from a walk where we had to carefully walk past at least ten of these unspeakable things. None of them did actually pounce, and he neutralized them all by lifting his leg and liberally sprinkling them with dog pee, which we all know stops them, at least temporarily from being able to hurt us.

His brother shared his fear of Christmas trees, after all, who doesn't? But older brother also had a terrible fear of dwarves. It did not help that I initially failed to understand what he was seeing with his special dog vision, when my neighborhood was mysteriously filled with them. I still do not know why the town covered all the firehydrants with burlap bags. These too, mercifully can be made safe to pass with a little quick urination.