Shaggy Dog

Once upon a time, a little girl who lived on a small farm outside of Laramie, Wyoming owned a fuzzy dachshund named Pete. The farm was set on the very edge of the dry desert; the little girl's front lawn was crisis-crossed by a network of shallow irrigation ditches, which brought muddy water down from the hills after the heavy rains.

Pete was a good and faithful dachshund who slept a front of the fire every night, but he was far lighted. Every morning Pete would get up, sigh a sigh based on considerable previous experience, and try to cross the lawn to reach the road to Laramie. He would aim towards the town, which he could plainly see shimmering in the distance, and plod along until his nose fell into a ditch. He would then back up about twenty feet until he could see this intervening obstacle, put his head down, and charge forward, jumping when he thought he had reached the trench. Pete's timing was bad. Most of the time he fell in.