Yesterday I mentioned cats in heat, today I’m going to mention dogs in heat.

When I was younger I delivered newspapers. I think I delivered papers about 6 years total. I started helping my friends big brother deliver the route their house was on, then I got my own route. First I had two routes downtown, then I got the route that my house was on.

My neighbors four doors down, the Boots’es, (I remember Randy Boots, older than us by probably 10 years and he had a sister, if you said her name I’d remember, she was a few years older than us. I had a crush on her, she was cute.)

(We used to put my friend Gregs little brother, Danny, through the Boots’es doggie door in their garage and he’d let us in, and we’d play pool on the pool table in their garage. And we used to climb up on their roof when they weren’t home. One time Mr Boots came home when we were on the roof, and we ran up over the top, down the back, and straight off the edge without even slowing down. We were out of the yard before he got around back and looked up on the roof. He asked us how we got down? Jumped? and we said yes. He just shook his head and walked in his house.)

The Boots’es had a dog named Missy, who hung out at my friend Gregs house. Missy was a pure outdoor mutt. Tangled fur, grey, old. If you howled like a wolf. Missy would howl like a wolf. If you said “sickem” she would bark at whoever you were looking at. She had gnarley teeth, was stinky and ugly.This picture is sorta close, but Missy had longer cheekhair…

Soooo, Missy would come on my paper route with me every day. I’d deliver the few papers behind my house, then pick up my Paper Bag (not paper bag) and head down the street to the neighborhood. And every day, two doors down, Missy would come angling out from the Gunn-ses and walk beside me, just me and Missy.

Except when she was in heat, then I had about a million dogs walking with me on my route.