here boy

It's not unusual to see a dog carrying a stick. But today I was walking up Van Ness behind some kind of pit bull/terrier beastie and his man, and the dog had a two-foot-long section of two-by-four in his mouth. Seriously. Almost as good as watching the dog was watching other people watching the dog. People smiled, shook their heads, stepped out from bus shelters to get a better look. The man, a rather colorless fellow in a San Francisco Giants T-shirt, didn't seem to notice that everyone was staring at his dog.

Eventually they stopped in an alley between Post and Sutter so the dog could do what dogs do outside, and the dog dropped the board with a resounding thunk. I thought about sticking around to see how s/he picked it back up, but the guy flashed me a glance that didn't suggest he'd appreciate strangers standing around watching his dog squat. So I moved on.