Attribution: EgorovaSvetlana, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, indulges the keeper as he wallows in a memory of the early days of cross-country skiing—wooden skies with metal bindings that required constant attention from the rapidly evolving world of ski wax.
To replace out-of-season trout fishing or grouse hunting, the keeper and his weekend pal John Lawton immersed them selves in the quiet wonders of cross-country skiing. They each had springer spaniel hunting dogs and so of course the dogs floundered along on the skiing trails, occasionally pausing to empty their bowels on the trail ahead of the skiers.
This generated a season-long apres ski conversation about the need for a ski wax that would solve the issue of dog poop on the ski trail.
By the time the skiing snow melted away in the spring and the last brandy bottle was empty, there were plans to start a company to produce this multi functionally product. The suggested name as the keeper remembers it was “The Doggie Doo Ski Wax Manufacturing and Distribution Company Inc.”
The keeper misses those long-ago skiing days, and he tries to use some restraint in telling Phyllis about them, her appreciation for earthy nonsense is obviously less than his, which is a good thing.
