Bonfire of the Vanities

Vanity: excessive pride or admiration of one's own appearance.

Hmmm.  I am vain about my shoes.  I love a pretty pair of shoes and might even buy a pair that will cause me trouble if they are excessively pretty. Oh, hell.  Might.  I did.  Then on Thursday I wore them. Because that's what you do.  You buy the pretty shoes and the next day, you wear them because you can't let the pretty shoes languish in your closet.  

But, are you bringing your guide dog puppy in on that day? Yes.  Are these shoes fairly high? Yes.  Might this be a problem?  "Oh, no!" Vanity speaks and wrenches the sensible shoes out of my hands and thrusts the sparkly red shoes into my hands.  "Wear them, wear them.  You will look so good."

So that is how I came to be wearing red platform shoes on Thursday when I had Coach. Vanity, thy name is Cheryl. 

Aren't they pretty? My red platform shoes with sparkly red flowers on the front.

I was ok walking around the library.  I was ok walking to the car for lunch.  The problem came when I detected a poo butt and thought perhaps Coach should take a little walk before we entered the restaurant.  Coach and I set off to find some potty spots.  Fortunately, there was a residential street near by.  Coach did he business in record time.  Unfortunately, there was also a scary snowman on someone's front lawn.

Coach is staring at the designer dog while Frosty looks on in the background.

Coach was not pleased.  In fact, he began to bark.  He used his big boy bark.  I thought, "This is a great opportunity to have Coach get a little closer to see that Frosty is not scary."  I'm such a good puppy raiser (oh, vanity!).  Mind you, this is the corner house, near the street with the restaurants near by.

Coach was barking and I was saying, "No Noise!" and we were inching our way up an uneven lawn when all of a sudden a gust of wind made Frosty lurch toward us. Coach jerked back and yanked me off my left red platform shoe so that now I was trapped by the strap in some strange platform black hole of half on and half off with a dog giving the fish eye to a wild Frosty. 

As I was flailing around, the next door neighbor walked up with her small, perfectly coiffed, designer dog and she and the dog glanced at me and Coach.  It was that glance that made me try not to flail so blatantly, but seriously, I couldn't right myself.  Were these shoes that high?

Coach must have felt the impact of the gaze as well because he gathered breath for another big boy bark at the small designer dog as the lovely, non-sweating woman and her beige tip-toeing, silent dog glided up their driveway, but all that came out were these high pitched, squeaky barks.  Coach stopped barking.  The designer dog looked back and sniffed. Coach looked at me.

Coach looking up at me for approval.

I had finally pulled myself together and stepped onto my shoe.  That's when I noticed that the outside patio of the restaurant where we were going to have lunch had a full view of our performance.  It was filled with people.

I hope they noticed my shoes were pretty.