The dog's been pretty rambunctious at night these days (we call it "twilighting"), probably just a function of a fucked up circadian rhythm due to her age along with the fact that she sleeps all day like a bum, so tonight I decide to walk her a little farther, around the block.
It's pretty chilly, and she doesn't have her inclement weather booties on, so maybe as a result of the cold, or the ice-melting-salt they use in front of the church, or maybe just because she's tired of walking around and wants to go home, but as we get towards the first turn of our journey, she begins the most pathetic pantomime of a lame doge that I've ever seen, limping forward lifting one paw, looking up at me with a wounded look, "no, you go on without me, I'll just end it here, in the cold and wet without a friend in the world," the whole thing.
I think she might be milking it a little, but I'm not a monster, so I turn us back towards home right away to get her out of the cold, and on the way back, a man in a parka with a fur-lined hood walking the other way comes up to her, whereupon the Tiny Tim act goes right out the window and she immediately and without a sign of distress trots up to sniff him suspiciously.
"Awwww, how old is she?" he says, as if she's a puppy, and not a giant old lady faker.