As some of you may know, a couple years ago Grady and I attended summer camp. The stories from that week have been nothing but rumors and hearsay… until now. I have finally set the record straight, sharing my private journal detailing the beginning of Grady’s rise to dog-poet stardom. Plus, Grady allowed me to include his poetry collection, Lance From France, in its entirety.
You can snag a copy of the book in its entirety over on mom’s store, but in case you’d like to sniff it before buying, here is an excerpt from the chapter covering Day 1 of camp.
Today was very exciting! Grady and I checked into Canine Poetry Camp and made lots of new friends. We also saw many of our friends from the agility circuit which was a fun surprise. After the initial group orientation (which took forever because a group of Huskies would not stop talking), we had nap time and then headed to our classes.
I signed up for every class offered but was told there was a limit to my course load, which made me sad, but only briefly. I love all my classes, all my teachers, and all my fellow students. My favorite teacher is Professor Higgintail. I tried to answer all her questions before anyone else, but she told me that we had to take turns. I do not like taking turns, but it seems everywhere you go, you’re always waiting your turn. Oh, well.
I didn’t see much of Grady once orientation was over except when he was rushing from class to class or surrounded by a group of his friends making them laugh. Most folks don’t know this, but Grady loves to imitate others. What Grady doesn’t know is that he’s good at it only about 50% of the time. A couple of summers ago, he found out that he is of Scottish heritage, so he went around all summer speaking in a Scottish accent. It about drove me crazy and made for a long, long summer.
After dinner, I asked Grady what he thought about CPC so far. He was surprisingly noncommittal in his response except to say that he was glad his long-time buddy, Roscoe, a cattle dog, was in many of his classes. I was relieved to hear that because Roscoe is as solid as they come, which, hopefully, would be a positive influence on Grady. Grady said he had decided his final project would be an original poem rather than a dissertation, (I decided to do both), but he was still contemplating the subject matter.
I quickly finished up my homework, extra credit assignment and the first 3 chapters of my dissertation. I’m going to get a good night’s sleep because there’s camp tomorrow. I’m so excited!
