by Jill Martin

Created on: July 10, 2007

I was outside walking Dakota, my 10-year-old spaniel chow mix, sometime after 11 p.m. If it's late enough and I'm pretty darn sure no one else is going to be outside or no one's going to be driving down my street, I'll let her go off the leash.

Well, last night, I let her go run off the leash, and we saw some geese in the distance. Normally, they're in fleeing distance of the lake, but not this time. They were on dry land, and the lake was a good, oh, 40 feet away. Dakota takes off after two adults and maybe five goslings. The adults don't even bother to protect the young and half fly, half sprint for the lake. The babies scatter all over the place. At this point, I say out loud, "Oh s*, she's actually going to catch one."

Sure enough, she did. I was so far away, there was nothing I could do but laugh. Dakota, proudly clutching a gosling in her jaws, triumphantly starts to canter back toward the house. She passes me in the process, looking pleased as punch, and is almost a quarter-mile ahead of me when I call her and get her to come back. Of course she comes back with the gosling in her mouth. This thing is still alive and slightly peeping, and at this point I feel pretty bad for it. It's obviously in pain, maybe dying. Dakota, meanwhile, couldn't be prouder. She just sat down with that thing in her mouth, waiting for my command. After multiple attempts, I finally got her to drop it - reluctantly - on the side of the road. Surprisingly, she didn't try to pick it back up as we went back to the house. I put her leash back on at this point. I figured she'd done enough damage for one night.

I don't know if the gosling died, but it wasn't there when I came back around 1 p.m. this afternoon.

On one hand, I feel bad if I crippled a defenseless gosling. On the other hand, I hate geese. They crap everywhere and are rude and loud. Plus, seeing Dakota catch one and be all happy about it was absolutely adorable.

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