A Trucking Dog’s Blog: By K.M. Stanfield My driver is strangely quiet as he swiftly pours out of the truck and slams his door loudly as he trudges around the hood to almost rip my door open. The scowl on his face is still obvious, but I’m assuming he’s thinking about that leaking wheel seal he keeps forgetting to change and last night’s rain and then scorching daytime heat which has been preventing that. But I’m so thrilled that perhaps he’s going to throw my ball, that when he reaches behind the seat for my collar and leash, I quickly push my head into the collar, ignoring his repugnant stare. I’m certain there must be a park to play fetch in close by and he’s taking me there so I can run until my tongue falls out of my head. With some concern I realize my driver is pulling me towards the truck stop, which does not resemble a dog park. He’s still quiet, almost secretive, as his continuing look of disgust in my direction is mixed with determination. Certain that there’s nothing I did, I’m thinking perhaps he’s going to finally What do you mean I stink? My driver is looking at me with a scowl on his face. With mouth awry and eyebrows furrowed, he continues to stare at me in a rather accusatory manner. I’m sitting here, attempting to have a blissful day looking into four wheeler’s cars, when he looks over and loudly tells me that I must be rotting from the inside out! To add to that rather strange comment he further informs me the flattened skunk we passed at the last exit would make a fabulous air freshener compared to me! Frankly, I don’t see or smell anything to confirm his rather less than superior human senses. Attempting to ignore my driver, I stuck my head out the window and let the 70 mph humid air blow over my body and swirl around the cab. This only causes a horrified gaze from him as if I had committed some felony assault to his senses. It reminds me of the look he had when coming out of a port-a-john at a receiver in Louisiana last summer – a look one gets before puking up undigested cubed cheese curds from Loves. I must say that usually, when we suddenly get off the highway with this kind of intensity, it tends to depend on the sound a pack of cigarettes makes when he shakes them, or should I say lack of sound. This must be the reason as the only other time we fly off the highway at mach speed is when I’ve been whimpering at him for an hour (which usually turns to barking because my colon is about to explode). Leaning into the off-ramp turn and pulling my head back from the window, we circled around and entered a rather large truck stop. This is one of those truck stops with a gazillion fuel islands and, of course multiple trucks, sans drivers, parked with doors locked just before the actual pumps. I’m positive this is not because they had exploding colons too, but because they just had to have a roast beef sandwich and soda before putting diesel in their rigs. Strangely enough there’s one lane clear and my driver pulls through the first parking spot in the front of the lot. As I don’t need to relieve myself and am not hungry, this sense of urgency seems unwarranted for anything other than for what he calls his “cowboy killers”. A misty, light rain begins to fall, unlike the torrent of rain that hit the highway last night. This is welcome, I think to myself, as the recent unbearable, unrelenting heat has caused my driver to close us up in the truck when sleeping, engine idling and A/C blowing, which is a bit irritating because it gives me no opportunity to bark at half asleep drivers walking past our rig at 0300. 60 10-4 Magazine / January 2026 DIRTY DOG DILEMMA
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