You know what I love AND hate at the same time?

When my dog runs free in the nearby floodplain as we get the canoe ready for Jon and Gil's river float. However, this experience is bittersweet because Daisy is a hound. Due to her keen senses she finds it even more exhilarating than the next dog to roll in whatever, making her smell as if she just swam in a vat of decomposing fish. Rotting fish and excrement. Mixed with death.

Daisy's been a part of our family one year this last November. My motto for the past several months has been You Can Take the Dog Out of the Pound, But You Can't Take the Pound Out of the Dog. I've often wondered how she wound up at the humane society at all. As soon as we introduced her to our family she was instantly tolerant of Egan sitting on her and pulling at her floppy lips and droopy ears; Gil snuggling up to her as she rests peacefully in the southern sun heating the hardwoods; and Allie. Well, Allie isn't as fond of the dog.

Yet today she's the one who chose to tenderly sob in fear as Daisy leapt from the parked car, slowly investigating the grasses and driftwood. As Daisy then BURST INTO SPRINT into the aforesaid floodplain, Allie melodramatically proclaims: SHE'S GONE! SHE'S GOING TO DIE!! I AM NOT GOING IN THAT CANOE!

I was all: Daisy's fine Allie, minimizing her concerns, selfishly distracted by the set up of the classic father-son canoe shot while making sure Egan doesn't fall into the murky sand bottom boat slip.

Seriously, though. Let's remember who we're talking about here. Daisy. The pound dog. I remind myself of the hundred times Daisy and I are walking and she gives me the whole: Look at me, Boss Lady. I can soooo be trusted trotting along side you. See? No biggie... as she gazes up at me with her droopy trustworthy eyes. Then taking me for the sucker that I am, so dedicated to off-leashing this hound, she takes off full speed ahead up the sidewalk and ZzzzzrrrrROOOOOM rounds the corner down the alley, disappearing for 3 hours and returning smelling like death, decomposing roadkill, and refuse.

Allie continues to softly cry as Jon and Gil set off on their journey southward down the river. Egan is scraping for the last dribble of toxic BUBBLES, MOM! from some cheap reception party favor bubbles, as I foreshadow us driving up and down the country road looking for Daisy, Allie still sobbing and Egan turning green from ingesting the majority of the bubbles.

I hear the familiar chinking of her approaching collar. There she stands. Covered in dark muck. Especially around her shoulders because that is the sweet spot for this girl to roll, taking in the sweet scent of nature. So proud of her new odor she's just certain we'll all appreciate as much as she. Daisy trots happily down the gravel drive toward us. Allie wipes her eyes and smiles realizing Daisy isn't dead, she just smells like she is. I too am relieved, for a second, that she decided to come back.

Egan still shouting about his bubbles, I immediately recognized Daisy's pride beaming from her newest canine fragrance, knowing she's all: Don't you guys love my new cologne? It's deer shit and dead opossum!

And let me tell you how lovely this latest fragrance smells as I wet down the dog. In my tub. The tub I use. This is when it becomes the part I hate because this is also the point when this all becomes my problem. But I'm not mad.

The time between shoving Jon and Gil downstream and when we were to pick them up was supposed to be spent with Egan taking a nap and me lying on the couch watching Get on the Bus while drifting in and out of nap, reveling in the fact that I have no more reading or paper writing. Instead, Egan the toxic bubble toting 2-year-old, Allie the tearful prepubescent, me the dutiful mother, and the muck covered dog tethered to the dash, all headed home to bathe the dog.

Happy Mother's Day.