L is for Longboarding

Sometime during college, my sister gave me a pair of roller blades. In movies, people wear roller blades and get pulled along by their dogs, so I thought, "Why not?!"

I put them on, leashed up her dog, Bailey, and WHOOSH! we were off! He listened when I said stop. When we went too fast, he let me veer off to the grass. My heart pounded with exhilaration.  If Bailey could do it, surely Baxter could!

A few days later, I flew from Michigan to Massachusetts, reunited with Baxter, put on roller blades, and....WHOOSH!

Baxter was FAST! He didn't listen as I screamed for him to slow down. Using my brain, I figured if I made him run up a hill, he'd slow down. I managed to forget where there's an uphill, there's a downhill....

He kept pulling, and pulling. The wheels spun, and spun. Soon, I was going faster than Baxter could run. Panicking, I looked for the nearest patch of grass and veered in that direction.

THUNK. THUNK.

My arm jerked backward. I was on my ass.

Kids sitting in the yard began laughing. "Whoa, that must have hurt!" but they weren't talking about me.

Standing up and brushing myself off, I asked, "What happened?"

"Your dog hit his head on the car, then his body wrapped around and hit the car."

Um.,,, :/

We never tried roller blading again. But, we do longboard pretty regularly. Since I've had him, he's gotten 1000x better on a leash, too.