Smells Like Chips

Colin threw a stick for Millie to chase after and the dog went scampering away to find the thing, although it never bought the stick back. All Millie would do was pick the stick up in it's slobbery chops and then put it back on the ground and wait for Cloin to amble over to pick the stick up himself.
It was a little like Millie was guarding it for Colin. If Colin chose not to come and get the stick but walk off in a different direction Millie would leave the stick and bound after Colin with an endless enthusiam. In all the time Colin and Millie had had their twice daily, and three times on weekends, walkies Millie had never once grown tired of a good old run out in the park. Rain or snow or wind or bright sunshine, it didn't bother Millie. The weather only really changed things for Millie if it was raining but all that meant was she tended to stay close to Colin, presumably because he carried the brollie, instead of running off a way up the road excitedly and then waiting with patient panting for Colin to make up the distance and then she'd go again, run ahead for twenty or thirty yards and then wait for Colin. Indeed Millie knew the route so well that Colin figured she could probably walk herself but where was the fun in that.
Certainly Colin liked walking Millie, he didn't like it in the rain or if it was cold so much but he was a pragmatic type of fellow and was prepared to take the rough with the smooth when it came to being a pet owner.
He was prepared to go for walkies in the rain, give up foreign holidays because he couldn't bare to leave Millie in the hands of one of those kennel horrors, he was prepared to spend a small fortune on dog food and jabs at the vets and doggie chews that helped Millie's teeth stay as clean as something that mostly only eats poor quality meat can, he was prepared to be woken early on weekends by a slobbery tongue because the dog had no concept of weeks or weekends you make allowances and just learn that a lie in isn't ever likely to happen, he was prepared to give bonfire night a miss even though he was quite partial to a hot dog and some fireworks, he was prepared to walk his dog twice a day, three times a day on weekends, and work his social callender around making the time for walkies at as regular a time as possible and he was prepared to admit that Millie was by far his best friend. The things it wanted he gave gladly and the things it didn't want didn't matter much too Colin.
Colin also liked walking Millie because She was always there. She was a fellow dog walker, in fact one of the lady variety of dog walkers, and Colin was secretly infatuated by her. So secretly that in the four of five years that the two had been regular dog walkers in the same park he'd not once been able to overcome a crippling inability to speak to Her. They crossed paths and Colin had his manners and graces in the right order and was always ready to offer up a polite hello or a smile and a nod but that's as far as it had got. Actual conversation had so far eluded him and that didn't please Colin.
Colin would have given up anything up to but not including Millie for the chance to strike up a lovely conversation with Her that would naturally lead to Her realising what a very nice man he was and the two settling down with their dogs in a sort of dream house that smelled of dog food.
Colin always thought she looked especially lovely around the autumn time. She wore a scarf and woolly hat very well and the orange/yellow/brown colour of the fallen leaves and the bare trees gave her a lovely glow as she watched Her dog skip about excited by the fallen foliage.
That was one thing that Colin noticed about Her actually, whereas Colin enjoyed throwing a stick or a ball or something for Millie to chase after She would mostly just stroll about in a sort of misshapen circle following a path around the park as her dog entertained itself. Horses for coarses Colin thought.
Colin liked his secret love for Her, it gave him quite a warm little glow, especially when the weather was bad. It made standing in the rain or the wind walking his dog not seem nearly that bad a thing to do. That said he would happily swap this secret glow for a chance to woo Her with his dazzling conversational skills and witty banter. He'd been practising their first encounter in his mind for ever so long now that sometimes he thought that it might actually have happened, but that his mind had blacked out at the onset of too much joy and had blown an important memory circuit.
But generally the conversation followed the path of some nice dog passed chitchat, followed by Colin introducing a witty remake, witty but not smutty obviously, and She would laugh playfully and maybe touch Colin lightly on the arm as a gesture that She approved of his charming ways, the two might swap polite generalities about their various lives and then Colin would gently shoehorn in "maybe, you know if you would like, we could take the dogs to this pub I know, it's got a big garden by a stream and is pretty as a picture. It would be nice. We could have drinks. Or maybe one time I could buy you a coffee." And She would respond affirmitivly and the two would develop a loving, mutually beneficial relationship that still had room for canines.
While Colin was daydreaming this delightful scene he absolutely failed to notice that he was about to walk smack into a tree. Well that's not strictly true, he actually noticed a full two and a half seconds before he walked into it but momentum and shock meant there was no stopping Colin and indeed he walked into the tree and bounced off to sit heavily down in the dead leaves on the seat of his pants.
"Ooooooooffffff." was the only thing that Colin could muster. That didn't seem enough to make things better so he said it again "Oooooofffff" and added an "Ooowwwwwwww" as punctuation.
Mille in the mean time had noticed this display of clumsiness and bounded over to see if she could lend the stricken pet owner a hand, by licking him in the face. This didn't help because his face was the main point of soreness, that and his arse bone, but Millie wasn't licking that and it's good that she wasn't as well, despite Millie's good intentions Coiln was forced by his faceache to gently buy firmly remove Millie's face from his and try to stand. That didn't go well. He slipped on the wet leaves and managed to land back where he'd been only few seconds ago only this time a conker had managed to sidle it's way under Colin's bottom and he'd landed on that causing an "Oooooooooffffffff" and an "Aaaaaaarrrrrrggggggghhhhh"
"Having fun?"
Colin looked up from his prone position and performed his famous impression of a fish out of water. The worst thing that could have happened in the world right now had just happened. She'd wandered over to see just how big of a klutz Colin had made of himself. A supergiant large one as it turns out. Because Colin not only was sitting bedraggled, wet and sore in a pile of soggy, mushy leaves he also, apparently, had lost the power of speech.
Colin did not want his big chance to shine conversationally and perform the best wooing since the world began to come while he was looking like a fallen idiot. But the best laid plans tend not to work out the way we hope and Colin's first window of opportunity to impress Her had come right when he least wanted it to. Colin had lost the ability to speak, all he could muster was a sort of confused frown. This by any stretch of imagination didn't lend to good communication and while Colin was struggling with basic motor functions or even form rudimentary, signs of intelligent life type sounds She was forced to fill the void.
"Do you need a hand?"
Colin managed a sorry nod.
"Come on then slugger," She held out a helping hand and levered Colin to his feet, it was not an elegant moment for Colin. "That's going to teach you not to try to fight a tree." She continued obviously not in the least bothered by Colin's embarrassment. Colin managed a shy, self-effacing, little laugh.
"Would you like to sit down and get your wind back for a minute or two?" Colin nodded. "Oh the shame, rescued by the Woman I've had a secret crush on all this time. It's just the end of the world." He thought while She guided him carefully over to a park bench and sat him down, making sure he was as comfortable as a man with a bruised bottom can be on a wrought iron bench and sat down next to him.
There was several moments of very uncomfortable silence, at least it was uncomfortable for Colin, which was broken by something that Colin had never expected Her to say.
"It smells like chips." Colin didn't know what to say about that but he did know one thing, maybe his faculties were recovering. Colin loved her more after that moment than he ever thought possible.