a poem in my pocket

The question is:

who is training whom?

When I walk my Alaskan husky mix

on a long leash, Lily pulls me hard uphill

like some sluggish sled (sans snow);

Then nearly tips me into the gravel

with an instinctive leap forward

toward a cluster of taunting sparrows.

As the neighbors pass, smiling in their truck,

I just hope they don’t yell, “Mush!”

or I could become

an alternate meaning of the word.