I said hi, and bent down to offer my hand for smelling. He slowed and neared. But then the motherf*cker started barking at me. Bastard hound got barking and he wouldn't stop. I started telling him to f*ck off.

The owner, a woman about two hundred yards back toward the city center, started calling him "come hee-yeer," all chirpy sweetlike the way women can never get male dogs to obey. Jesus.

I got to stamping my feet and telling him to f*ck off and go away. People downstream for a hundred yards started to move on. God damn.

I tried to chase the f*cker away, tried stamping my feet some more, and started to look schemingly at a halfempty plastic coke bottle over against the castle wall. Woman kept calling the dog. "Come heeyer." Shit. I was finally physically going for the pop-bottle and I was going to swing that f*cker at the dog — I was going to paste him broadside — when he finally barked his way back toward the woman.

God d***it. Just a typical part of my grouchy day.