Your Dog Walker Is a Felon: My Journey Through Probation’s Precarity (SLICE Magazine)

It wasn’t even seven in the morning on Thanksgiving Day, but Aspen growled as the man with salt-speckled hair and his purse-sized Pomeranian dashed by. Although they were at least five feet away from us, Aspen’s snout stretched, flashing sharp canines.

“Calm it down, Beautiful,” I coaxed, reaching over Cameo to pat Aspen’s fleshy underbelly. “We’re alright.”

Once man and dog were both beyond reach and out of sight, Aspen, Cameo, and I continued our walk. It was our second of the day. Not one of us seemed to mind.

We traversed the usual route, pouncing along Dekalb Avenue onto Tompkins and up to Herbert Von King Park. Amid almost barren branches and fields littered with stiff leaves, Aspen galloped like a thoroughbred and Cameo bounced tabby-spry into leafy mounds. At ease, I watched the girls play, tossed sticks for them to chase, smiled when their bodies banged against each other, and scooped their poop. Thirty minutes after arriving, frolicking in fall’s foliage, and chasing bemused squirrels, we hustled down Lafayette Avenue, cut a left onto Throop, passed the bitter-earth aroma that billowed out of Burly Coffee’s doors, and landed back in front of the new construction Aspen and Cameo knew as home.

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