When I was a teenager, I had the job of bringing in wood for the fireplace every night. We heated our house with it so in the time between getting home from school and dinner I was supposed to go out to the woodpile and bring enough in for the night. Like every other chore I had, I was not fond of it. So one day I got a bright idea, I would hook up the family dog, a German shepherd named Gretchen, to the dolly full of wood and have the dog tow the wood into the house. So I spent most of the afternoon hooking up the rig to the dog and loading the wood. Our dog, a very calm and well-mannered dog sat there innocently while I loaded the cart with no sign of the panic that as to come. Once I was ready I walked a few feet from the dog and then called for her to come to me. As soon as the dog felt that something was attached to her she freaked out, she ran right past me straight toward the front door of the house yelping and leaving a trail of excrement, amazingly when she hit the front door it flung wide open allowing the dog to continue her path into the house with a now empty cart, but not empty bowels, spinning behind her like a sideways top on a string. She then proceeded to take a left into the kitchen and then a right into the dining room with the cart knocking over houseplants and putting a large hole in the dining room china cabinet. The fear on my face was bad enough just knowing what I had done to the poor dog but the next sound was even worse. It was the sound of my dad’s car coming down the street and it caused an immediate panic. My mom who had been in the kitchen when the dog flew by looked and said, clean up the poop and get the dog outside. I did my part while mom picked up the large house plant and put it in front of the china cabinet hole so when dad walked in there was only the two of us probably looking guilty and sweating from the burst of activity. This is one of those family moments which I will remember for a lifetime and every time I think about it I get a smile. Long after I am senile and can’t remember my own name, the nursing staff will wonder what I am smiling about and it will be a memory like this one.