cleverer than she looks

This is Summer, or, as she is affectionately called, "the dumb one."  Summer fears many things: balloons, the cat, your feet, boxes of crackers, leaves blowing in the wind.  However, the things she fears above all else are storm drains.

It's odd, too.  The other stuff she's feared most of her life, but the storm drain thing is recent.  Like, she finally got around to reading It or something.  As soon as she spots a storm drain, she turns and runs in the opposite direction.  Which can be problematic if you're walking more than one dog.  However, I've spent the last few months coaching her, and now she knows to get up on the curb before we reach the storm drain, that way she'll walk over it, which is not scary at all.  In fact, she gets this little spring in her step, as if she knows she's defeated something and darn if it doesn't feel good. 

Right now, we have a few inches of snow on the ground, with more falling as I type.  All of the storm drains are covered by the snow the plows pushed to the curb, so I didn't think about them at all as I set out to walk the dogs this afternoon.  Summer, however, is evidently cleverer than she looks.  She knows those storm drains are there, even if she can't see them.  So, as we approached the first storm drain on our walk, she plowed into the snow on the side of the road.  Summer is not a likes-to-get-her-feet-week kind of dog, so this was odd, to say the least.

"What are you doing, dummy?"  I asked her, tugging her back towards me. Summer obediently came.  We got closer to the storm drain.  Next thing I knew, my left arm was yanked behind my back, and Summer, in her desperation to GETAWAYGETAWAYGETAWAY had pulled out of her collar.

And that's why I spent 5 minutes of my life chasing a terrified little dog through the neighborhood.