42/ 100 Cart Dog

I have been writing a little bit recently about shoes and feet and I was reminded of the time we witnessed a terrible crime taking place, and how we were faced with a moral dilemma.

A few houses down from our own guesthouse was another one. We passed it every day and barely gave it a second look but this morning someone had left the front door wide open. There was still an outer metal barred gate, firmly closed, but the inner door was swinging gently in the breeze. Just inside the door was a small hallway that led to the first room and a desk where, presumably, someone would sit sometimes and run the guesthouse. Today, however, the desk was also empty.

In the hallway were a few jackets hanging up, beneath which was the usual pile of shoes and sandals belonging to the guests who were staying there. Because the door had been left wide open a couple of puppies, skinny enough to squeeze through the metal gate, had decided to sneak in. Once they had crossed the threshold they had an entire house to explore but, being dogs, they had much more pressing matters to attend to. How could anyone expect them to just walk past the pile of shoes without having at least a little sniff and a nibble?

Of all the ancient flip-flops and tatty loafers they did, of course, select a brand new pair of Crocs and when we discovered them they were sprawled out on the doormat having a good chew of each end of some unfortunate person’s sandal.

After watching them in amusement for a little while (the damage was already done after all) we called into the building to see if anyone was around to alert them of the crime against shoes currently taking place in their hallway but nobody answered. Unable to get past the gate we tried to distract the puppies too, but they were in a heaven of chewed-up pieces of foam.

I did consider reaching through the bars and removing the shoe but to what end? They would’ve just taken another one, and you know it wouldn’t have been the other half of the pair either. We decided we had done all we could and carried on our way.

Later that evening we returned to find the door well and truly closed, and it was never open again for the rest of our stay there.