Man with Dog

I just barely avoid the two screaming girls on a fatbike. Haiku looks at me, bewildered. He used to snap at scooters now and then, but ever since fatbikes started tearing along the dike, he’s lost his sense of it.

We pass the house where, behind the window, two tough dogs yearn for a gladiator fight. Lacking opponents, they take it out on the venetian blinds. Haiku, my sock-footed hero, knows he’s safe and treats it as a warm-up for what’s to come. Soon he’ll be let off the leash on that odd stretch of dike between the Ring Road and the industrial zone, officially designated as a free-running zone.

He dashes off, full of hope, toward the end of the world: the back of a garden center, where the air smells of clay and canaries. As we trudge through the mud together, I warn him not to jump into the ditch. I suspect it’s a sewage outlet, though I’m quick to assume such things. I scold him sternly as he scrambles out again, wagging his tail. The horses at the riding school look despondent. It all fits with this ragged patch of the Westzanerdijk.

Then suddenly the sun breaks through. Out of nowhere, a kingfisher streaks across the surface of the ditch. It taps the water a few times in flight and moves faster than a fatbike. The horses behind me leap with joy. The pigeons in the coop by the shuffleboard club coo with contentment.

I note with satisfaction that the fierce dogs behind the window have left a portion of the blinds intact — probably so they can finish the job tomorrow. With a spring in my step, I head home with Haiku.