A case of the canine zoomies yields symphony of screams

There are screams of joy, there are screams of fear and there are screams of just plain excitement.

A scream of joy may spontaneously erupt when your kid punches in the winning goal in her soccer game. A scream of fear may arrive as that backyard homer you just cranked seems to be headed straight for the neighbor’s window. And a scream of excitement is the kind that flies forth spontaneously when no other utterance will do. The best of all screams is a combination of the three. If you want a good scream, hang around with my dog for a while.

When we adopted Frankie, we learned early on that although he is for the most part a kind, loving and exceptionally laid-back creature, he does have one certifiable craziness — he’s a fool for the zoomies.

Zoomies — or as science defines them, Frenetic Random Activity Periods — are those moments when a pup uncorks all the crazy he’s been packing away in an endless effort to be a good boy and dashes about like a lunatic. When Frankie zooms, it’s like lighting off a bottle rocket in a grocery store. Every dash is at the speed of light, every turn leaves a trail of smoke and scattered debris, and every second it continues, the risk that something is going to be knocked over, set aflame or otherwise destroyed increases dramatically.

Ears flying, jowls flapping and tail outstretched to twice the length of his body, Frank’s feet do not appear to touch the ground during these episodes. The very definition of reckless abandon, he seems to carry no awareness whatsoever of where his body is in space, especially with regard to human beings. He has knocked the knees out from under us, bruised a hip with his knotty head and even delivered a fat lip to my wife, who thought it would be fun to capture the moment on video. Frank plowed directly into the camera as Kristin framed the shot.

There’s no way to predict when Frankie’s fancy will take flight, but he is given to zooming on certain types of landscape. The banked oval of a stormwater detention basin near our home seems to have been designed as a doggy zoom velodrome, and my daughter’s sloping front yard lends itself well to Frank’s adrenaline-fueled sprints. It was there that just the other night Frank delivered a thrill that now stands as my most breathlessly hilarious moment so far with the boys.

Kristin and I were out on the driveway pitching paper airplanes with our grandsons James and Max when Frank found a stick and engaged in a race with his own common sense. We gathered the boys between us, and all began screaming in unison. Joy! Fear! Excitement! A chorus of the best of all screams. The dog revved up on the cacophonous squeal like a stock car juiced with nitro, dashing even faster, swooping ever closer while orbiting at breakneck speed. To both his mind and ours, this was the best of all screams.

Kristin and John Lorson would love to hear from you. Write Drawing Laughter, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email John atjlorson@alonovus.com.