Leg Race

There’s different ways to have a three-legged race. We all know the way where you tie one of your legs to someone else’s and run against other couples in the same predicament. But the other way that I’ve seen is two dogs that both had three legs, running against each other. One of them was missing the front left leg. The other dog was missing a leg in the back. It wasn’t a bad thing. The dog’s owners seemed like perfectly happy people, and the dogs seemed happy too. I saw the race at a downtown park one day. I don’t know what the conversation was like for the owners the day before. “Hey, your dog has only three legs too? Let’s have a dog race!” Or maybe both dogs just ended up at the same time together by divine chance and they were so excited to be able to race with the chance of beating someone that they started racing on their own. Watching them run was so pitiful. They dragged and scooted and lurched their way forwards. But both dogs were smiling, and had wildly happy eyes as they ran. And any sad people watching became happy too—because that’s what dogs do.