I'm walkin'.... yes indeed.... I'm walkin'.....

My husband was singing that old song this afternoon and now I can't get the tune out of my head. We couldn't remember all the words to the song, but we put da da da da in for the missing lyrics.

And after dinner tonight, I went walkin' with V next door. We usually walk around the path in the park-- from beginning to end, it's about two-and-a-half miles. So if you do it at a good pace, which we do, you can work up a sweat-- or an appetite, as V says.

Walking with V is always interesting. She says hello to every squirrel she sees-- her reason for this is that when squirrels take over the world, "because there's so dang many of 'em," she wants to be on their good side. That must make sense to her, because she's been talking to squirrels for years and she always gives the same reason. We don't break our pace for her quick little hello to every squirrel, but it does make for weird inserts into our conversations: "Did you see that dang McCain--- Helloooooo you cute little squirrelly-wruirrelly --- on the debate last night?"

When we were almost half-way through the path, we saw a woman sitting on one of the little bridges trying to keep two dogs by her side. We thought they were her own pets, and when one of the dogs started to follow us, we turned around and brought the dog back to her. It turned out that the dogs weren't hers-- she had called their owner (phone number on the dogs' tags) and she was waiting for the owner to get there with his car to pick them up.

V and I tried to walk away twice, but one of the dogs kept following us so we had to stay put for a few minutes. V looked at the tags on one of the dogs and saw that they lived at a house on the street behind ours. We (translation: V) offered to let the dogs follow us and we'd bring the dogs back to their house and put them into the backyard. The woman got on her cell phone and called the owner to tell him that, but he was just one street away from where we all were with his dogs, so we just started to walk towards the corner, with the dogs following us.

On the way to the end of the street, both V and I noticed that the nails on one of the dogs were way too long-- so long that some of them were curling under and the poor dog was limping because he couldn't put his paws down too hard because the nails were getting in the way. V wanted to take that dog right to her house, cut its nails, then bring it back to the owner. I told her there was no way she could do that, being that the owner had just pulled up with his car.

Then V looked at the dog's tag again, memorized the address, and vowed to just go on over there one day when the owner would be at work, and she'd cut the nails on this poor dog and no one would be the wiser. I asked her what she would do if she injured the dog's paw with the clipper? Or what if the dog bit her when she walked into that backyard? Details, she said.... too many details to think about. All she cared about was cutting those nails.

When the dogs saw their owner, they went straight to him-- the long-nailed dog limping instead of running. As the man was thanking us all for holding the dogs for him, the girl with the cell phone told him that she was the one who had called him, I told him that the female dog needed her nails cut, and V was telling the guy about a nail clipper that he could buy at PetCo. At that point, the guy opened up the door of his car, told his dogs to "Come on in, fellas!" and off they went.

We all stood there and watched. "Clueless." "Well, you're welcome!" "Why do people like that have dogs if they're not going to take care of them?" All of those comments were followed by a lot of "Tsk-tsks" and head-shaking, not to mention all three of us standing there with our hands on our hips and our toes tapping.

The guy drove away with his dogs, and we all got on with our walks. "Hellooooo little squirrelly-wruirrelly.... got yourself a little pine cone there?.... I'm gonna getcha!"