Chick magnet

(Sorry readers. I can’t put a picture on here due to insanity from PhotoBucket, my usual image-source. I’m trying to set up my own domain to escape PhotoBucket.)

“You keep looking at my dog like that, and I just might hafta come up there.”
Three pretty ladies were on the outside deck of a restaurant near Kershaw Park at the north end of Canandaigua lake. They were having beer after yoga, and I was walking Killian in the park. Killian is my new rescue Irish Setter.
“Go ahead,” the prettiest one said. She was the one doing all the looking.
“Oh, what a pretty dog,” one cooed.
Years ago I woulda kept walking, a legacy of Hilda Walton, my next-door neighbor during childhood, and also my Sunday-School Superintendent. No girl would ever wanna talk to me, especially not the pretty ones. That is, ones I deduced as pretty. “Pretty” to Hilda were prim-and-proper, knees covered, etc.
“Killian is a chick-magnet!” a friend declared.
That friend is another who lost her long-time marriage-mate. She’s a widow; her husband died five years ago, my wife six years ago.
Actually there are three of us, and we eat out one night per week. But one, a widower, fell sitting-down at a car-show, and broke vertebrae. He was hospitalized, so it was just me and my widow friend.
Occasionally I walk Killian with my aquacise instructor — she brings her dog. Even though we’re very different, I always hope she comes.
But I realized walking with her diverts all the ladies me and Killian attract. Killian is gorgeous, and also an Irish Setter = rare. I think ladies also wanna meet someone whacko enough to take on a lunging monster.
“You don’t see men wanting to pet your dog,” my widow-friend observed. “Some do,” I noted; “but many avoid me.”
“Dogs and babies,” my widow-friend said. “My husband called ‘em ‘chick magnets.’”
“Walks with Killian at Kershaw are turning my life around,” I added; “and 70+ years late! Faire Hilda is spinning in her grave.
And it’s like I don’t need Killian. Just say it, even to the pretty ones. If that turns them off, that’s their loss.
It’s too bad my wife can’t experience the person I am now.”
“And if she hadn’t died, you’d still be the same jerk you were before,” my friend commented.

• A “rescue Irish setter” is usually an Irish Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. abusive or a puppy-mill — or perhaps its owner died. (Killian was a divorce victim.) By getting a rescue-dog I avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up. — Killian was fine. He’s my fifth rescue.