Here, I sit in my office, reeking of dog, dog-pee down my leg..

Wait; let's back up a second. [Ahem.]

You've heard of seeing-eye dogs? Well, there are also dogs trained to help hearing-impaired people. (Hearing-ear dogs? Beats me!) Anyway, we've got a new gal in the building (started work today, I gather), and she's got one of these dogs with her. Young dog, by the looks of it; some sort of German Shepherd mix, I guess. Very fast.

Well, the dog went into some kind of sensory overload, we think; it saw the rabbits along the walkway earlier and wanted to play, and then could not find its master for a second, didn't know what the layout of the building was, and Lost Its Mind There For A Second. Next thing you know, the dog is blasting along the corridor at 100 miles per hour with a herd of people chasing it and calling out, "Stop! Stop! BAD girl!"

Me, I'm sitting in my office, staring into space and trying to look busy (or at least thoughtful). I heard the voices first, then the pit-pat and jingle-jingle of a berserk dog approaching at high speed. I debated sticking my head out the door, but thought better of it. Good thing, too - at that instant, a rocket-propelled bundle of fur whooshed past the doorway. All I saw was a dark blur; I mean, that puppy was COOKIN'.

The dog's brain was fully engaged, locked down on two thoughts:

1. Rabbits.
2. Outside.

Impervious to verbal command, training, habit, and custom, the product of a zillion years of dog evolution was Doing What Dogs Do Best -- running wide-open, tongue hanging out in the wind. After the passage of the dog (and the subsidence of a fit of howling laughter), I asked some of the straggling chase crew if they wanted to get a perimeter set up and try to corner the silly thing. We've got regular hallways and offices in my part of the building, but then it opens out into a huge rat-maze cube farm. They declined; we decided to let the dog's owner try and sort it out. As we were talking, we heard it again -- pit-pat-pit, jingle-jingle, FOOOSH! The dog went wailing down an adjacent hall, appearing in the intersection with our hall for a bare split-second. In the mean time, it had threaded a path through the cube farm, startling the living daylights out of hordes of cube workers. ("Did you see that?" "What?" "Was that a DOG? Damn, but it was FAST!")

The dog doubled back on itself in a tenth of a second, then came back up the long hall like a bat out of Hell. For some reason, it hit our intersection and turned on a dime, headed our way. It came at us like a furry missile, stretched out at a dead run, belly on the deck.

Somewhere about this time, my inner predator woke up. Eyes dilated, hair stood up, adrenaline pumping. Now, MY brain was engaged:

"Animal. Headed this way; high speed."
"Small furry animal. Good to eat? Fun to catch?"
"Ballistic solution: crouch, tense, spring sideways, like SO!"

I regained my senses kneeling on the floor with a spastic dog in my arms. She turned herself completely inside out, tried to bite me 847 times in three seconds (got me once; a scratch), and then dumped her bladder all over my leg and the floor when she realized I wasn't going to let go. I chattered at her a mile a minute, trying to get her to settle down. The search party, victims of poor directions, finally caught up with us a few minutes later. The poor gal was mortally embarrassed, especially about Timber's (that's the dog) indiscretion. The dog seemed embarrassed as well, hanging her head and still jittery from the massive adrenaline rush of running laps around the building. In a few minutes, though, everybody had caught their breath and was starting to settle down. The gal took Timber out for 'walkies' (not before Timber had sniffed me minutely.. I expect I've made a friend for life..) and I washed my hands to get rid of the dog smell. (Do dogs stink more when they're excited? Sure seems like it!)

So, anyway.. Here, I sit in my office, reeking of dog, dog-pee down my leg..

Never a dull moment in this monkey-house!

Place your bets! Next time the dog freaks out, what are the odds it'll make for my office at Warp Six?

Now, here's the odd bit: after all the commotion, I found myself sitting in my office, totally zoned out, oblivious to my software problems and the state of the %$@#%$@ database. I felt as if I had been transported out of the Corporate Work Environment(TM) altogether and was now living in the Cool World, waiting for Holly Would and the Goons. Weird crap like this seems to happen to me all the time, too - not just isolated dog-hunts in the office areas.

So, I pose my question to the experts: was yesterday's euphoria the result of a slack infusion, or was I just suffering from the hypnotic effect of a pool of dog urine?

Waiting patiently for mystic revelation, more coffee, or the name of a good dry-cleaner... something like that, anyway...