The dog is turning back, the man attaches the leash with the snap hook at the dog collar. The dog waggles and now they are both walking along the road, approximately 200 meters till the end of the line of the houses. There the lane disembogues into a sidewalk, seperated by roadblocks.The dog snuffles and raises his leg at a hedge fringe, the man pulls him away quickly. The forest is in immediate nearness. It is humid, it was raining just some minutes ago. The trees are very green and dense, the forestground is braun, moist and on some spots it is covered with light fouling. It smells like soil and grass. The dog pulls the leash. While passing the roadblocks it has exceptionally taken, the side at which one could pass by holding the leash. Else it always takes the side where you have to pull it backwards, therewith the arm wont get caught by relinquishing the leash. The man pulls the dog to his side and detaches the the snap hook. The dog is very much exited and bears down to a neap shrub to urinate. At the woodside the path is only covered with grid and turns around a corner through a stock of poplars. The dog runs ahead. The man summons the dog. The dog turns back, runs towards the man, waggles and reverses again to follow the path with a fast footfall. The man follows the dog. Behind the poplars, which are brawling softly in the wind, there is a water located in a glade. The forestpond. The man can‘t see the dog anymore. But through the leaves of the trees he sees a person standing on the other side of the pond, it shines whitely. The man accelerates his steps a bit more and crosses the poplars. Now he can oversee the whole pond. The dog stands on the other side, close to a woman which is wearing a white trenchcoat. In front of her stands the dog and a black poodle. The woman removes a stick of the ground and throws it into the water. The dog pounces behind and swimms towards the point, where the water induced little waves accused by the strike hitting the water surface. It wheezes loudly. The black poodle stands on the lightly elevated shore and barks, overlooking the scene, to the water. The man reaches the woman and greets her with a “Hallo“. She looks at him and says “ Good day“. The poodle still contious to bark vehemently at the water. The dog has reached the stick which is swimming in the water and takes hold of it. It wheezes even louder and swimms back holding the stick. Bedraggled it comes out of the water and runs towards the man, stops in front of him, drops the stick and shakes its boddy vigorously. The woman laughs. Her trenchcoat is covered all over with dark waterspots. The poodle is still barking, the woman says: “You old swank, you are nothing but a wimp“. The man laughs. He looks at the woman, then at the dog and fixes it with the leash. The dog shakes it‘s body another time, but only in a tremulous move, which makes his back side mince. The man walks direction to the path an says loudly, having a gaze at the woman: “Good buy“. She smiles and turns towards the poodle, which gets ready to follow the man and retains it by holding the collar. She wispers something into its ear and laughs once more. The man knows a big black poodle in the area around. It is called Ivan. He has seen it some more often in the forst with an about 12 years old girl. This poodle looks pretty much similar to the one of the woman. Also his dog seemed to recognize it, otherwise it would have hummed aggressively. Finally the poodle is a male dog and furthermore his dog doesn‘t like black dogs. The man turns towards the dog and walks with it from the glade into the forest. Actually around him are birches and spruces. The dog pulls the leash, the man takes hold of the collar and unclenches the snap hook. Looking back, he still sees some wite of the womens coat through the trees. Out of a bush flies a blackbird lowly over the path and dissapears with loud yells in another shrubbery. The dog runs forward waggling and snuffles passim the waysides. Being wet, its fur seems to look darker. The sun stands behind the trees, through the birches it shines till the ground of the forest. It is hazy. The man goes further and calls the dog, which turns to the right while reaching a crotch. But the man wants to turn to the left. They cross a sandy path with horse dung. The dog snuffles at the horse dung and the man calls: “Fie!“ The dog looks at the man and runs rapidly further. Now the forest is composed of oaks and maples. The sun doesn‘t reach the ground of the forest anymore. After about one kilometer they reach a glade on which one can already see the bright daylight from far away. On the glade is a soccer field, surrounded by a red tartan runway. The field is surrounded by a head-high fence, on which vetches are trailing along. They are already about to die back. Everywhere its leaves are yellow, but there are still large numbers of big white blossoms, which remain immaculate. The dog runs along the fence, the man looks at the soccer field. It is totaly empty, the wet floor steams a bit, right now it is very sultry. The dog has reached a dust bin on the edge of the field, where there is also a gate in the fence. In front of the dust bin, which hangs on half hight at a metal pole, lays a transparent plastic bag, in which an undefinable content ins wrapped. It‘s size is like the measures of a melon. The dog snuffles at the bag and wrenches it. The man calls it loudly and runs into its direction, astonished the dog looks up till the man reaches. The man takes the bag and throws it into the dust bin. He paws the dogs neck. “Well behaved…, this is bad…“, he says calmingly to the dog, which reconvenes to waggle. Reaching the fence they sharply turn off to the left and follow the course of the tartan runway just for a while. The cloud cover continous to overcast and at the next field corner the dog turns to the right, following the crotch away from the sports field into the forest. The man follows. The path becomes narrower and leads over tree stumps. At some points are hughe puddles. The dog runs just smac through and slobbers a bit of the water. The man walks around the path-bordering stinging nettels. He lifts up his hands for not getting his arms touched by the nettles. Shortly the dog stands still, in order to wait for the man, who fell back a bit because of the plants and puddles. Far away rings out a shot, than a second. The dog pricks up its ears and poises abruptly. After a while they once again cross mutually the sand path for horses and reach again the forest area with the birches and spruces. The air is oppressive. It starts to rain softly, the driblets are like warm water on the skin. The dog deselerates its steps slighly, its interest for the forest eases up since they have taken the same way back like the way they came. The man recognizes the dogs lack of interest and suddenly turns off the path, directly into a coppice of birches. Now the dog follows again flutteringly. The ground is almost impassable, there are many blackberry bushes, that are still small-sized and lead their tendrils like snares over the surface. Occasionally some small and yellow mushrooms are visible. They settle on decayed wood pieces. On a grassy expanse the dog tracks down a culver, which flushes tippily lurching with a whiring noise. It then disappears over the tree top of some spruces. Stricken with hunting feaver the dog runs behind. The man can‘t see it by now, he calls it and follows into its direction. Soon he finds it in front of an ground hollow pointing on three legs, the head turned aside. It is entirely concentrated on the earth hole and just gives the man a short look to restare right into the dark hole again. The man smiles and looks through the birch trunks. Poplars rising much taller behind these start to whoosh in the initiating rain. Through the trees he reconizes, that the forest pond is situated in front of them. He just wants to walk into the ponts direction when he hesitates. Through the trees he can see something swimming in the water. It is a person with dark hair, which dives under for then to turn up buffing and blowing and shaking its head. The man approaches further to the direction of the water and realizes that the women he met before with her black poodle is swimming precisely in the center of the pond. Her dark hair is drenched completely black, her shoulders appear out of the water. They are very much white. She submerges once and at the same time she shows parts of her back, of her butt and her legs, when she dives head first down the water that resembles a dark liquid. The surface of the water dances because of the intensifying rain. The man stares on the pond and hesitates. The dog continues gazing at the earth hole and beginns to extend the inlet by scratching. It growls slightly with it. The man looks over at it and wispers quietly „schschschsch…“. He lifts ostentatiously his finger to his lips. He cowers and once again peers out of the cover to the pond. The woman reappears. She strikes her hair out of the face and grinds it slightly behind her head. Withal she keeps herself with swimming movements of her legs and her hands in a nearly upright position. From time to time her breasts are slightly visible. They are also very white. The dog has begun to burrow very impetuously on the earth hole and at the same time it beginns to bark flutteringly, apparently it has found the scent of an animal and tries to unveil it. The woman turns her head into his direction and tries to observe something in the leaves of the trees. The man hesitates, reasons shortly, stands up and goes briskly through the birches, rather precisely to the point where he first met the woman with the black poodle whose name might be Ivan. The poodle is not visible. She sees him approaching the water and sprawls out her arms, for to wave her hands to a greeting. Withall she elongates her breasts entirely out of the water, in order to sink down again and to laugh alertly in an easy audibly way. The dog in the backgrond barks like crazy. The man turns around and calls it vigorously. The dog continous barking and and whimpers loudly. The man turns around and sees how the woman prepares to dive under head first again. She gives tongue to crowing sound. He reverses and runs back to the dog. This has digged itself in its hunting fever till its neck into the earth hole and barks into the ground. The man grasps it at the collar and pulls it with his last ounce of strength out of the earth hole. The dog is entirely soiled. Its slobber is spread over the whole snout and the earth has spliced with the splitter to some kind of pulp. Its eyes are shedding tears and earthcrumbs are sticked to them. Its fur is covered with remnants of the forest ground. And now it becomes even murkier. The man vigorously pulls the recoiling dog away from the hole and shouts at it. The dog reacts just for some seconds and springs again towards the earth hole. The man takes the leash and wrenches the dog away from the hole and attaches the snap hook at the collar. The dog yowls and its wimpering sounds are flashing over, so that they sound like the squealing of a pic. He tries now in spite of the tighten leash to reach the hole again. As a hunting dog full of energy with enormous strength it wrenches the man once more to the earth hole. The man shouts at the dog frantic of excitation and beats its rear part with the end of the leash. Now the dog is breaking off its fury, throws down, still stucked halfly in the ground and tries to turn whimperingly on its back. The man wrenshes the leash and pulls the dog over the stirred up forest ground away from the earth hole. Yet he sees from an angle of his eye, how a dark bird, not bigger than a dove, fires like an arrow, with an egregious speed out of the earth hole and disappears low-flying over the ground into the direction of the pond.The dog is jumping up entirely gobsmacked and the man follows with his eyes the dark object and then lowers his look over the surface of the pond. The raindrops are dancing on the watersurface. The rain superimposes any other noise. The man pulls the dog to the shore of the pond and looks tensly at the water surface. Meanwhile he himself is very much wet and the rain is running along his nose, so that he has to go with his hand over his face to eleminate the itching drops. The dog clings closely to his right leg, with jammed tale, hanging ears and big eyes. The man stares along the water. Nothing happens. The woman does not resurface. Quietly he counts the seconds. Approximately after the number thirty he beginns to run arround the shore. Nothing moves. Alternately he looks to the pond and the forest. After a few minutes he effetely sits down on a stump of a sawed off poplar, the dog stands with the leash on at close quaters and watches the forest, bedraggled of the rain. The man stares again into the water and dwells convulsively. He unhands the leash, stands up and takes off his shoes. He deposits them on the stump and wades with straddled arms into the water. The ground of the pond is glibbery and pours up between his toes. He has rolled up his trousers. The dog stands at the shore and watches him. When the water beginns to soak the cloth of his trousers he stops, turns around towards the dog and then looks again at the water. The dog lays down and beds his head on the frontpaws. The spittle is washed away by the rain. A little carryover still sticks on his chaps. The man remains in the water comming up to his waist.
© Hagen Rehborn 2007/08, all rights reserved
