We walk the dogs twice a day, every day. We walk in cold or heat, rain or sunshine, cloudy or clear. And, yes, we’ve even walked during a hurricane warning, though not when the storm itself pounded us.

A greenway connected to our neighborhood runs north-south, so we go north in the morning and south in the evening for variety. Walkers, bicyclists, skateboarders, Segwayers (what do you call one who rides a Segway?), snakes, deer, raccoons, alligators, and approximately eleventy-seven bazillion squirrels share the trail.

We enjoy meeting them all—ok, maybe not so much the snakes and alligators, but we give them plenty of room. Unfortunately, however, a couple of people insist on walking their dogs off-leash.

Understand, I don’t care what you do as long as it doesn’t interfere with me. I’ve seen a few dogs over the years who respond to every command, don’t chase wildlife, and behave well off-leash. These people’s dogs, however, fail every test.

About a week ago, their dogs came racing up to us, barking and snarling. One of those dogs is roughly the size of a squirrel. Somehow, I prevented my dogs from performing a taste-test to see if he was squirrel-flavored, but much ruckus was raised before the people succeeded in corralling their canines.

You think this post is about that bad behavior, right?

Nope.

This weekend, we passed an older gentleman getting out of his car for his morning walk. We nod and say good morning as we always do, but instead of his usual response, he asks, “Did you drop something the other day?”

“No.”

“You know, the day those people’s dogs ran up to you? I don’t know why they let them run off-leash.”

“Yes, we remember, but, no, we don’t think we dropped anything.”

He walked to the rear of his car and opened his trunk. He held something up in his hand. “After you left, I found this on the ground right where it happened. I picked it up and held it thinking it might be yours. I figured I’d run into you sooner or later.”

I looked at the object, but didn’t recognize it. We wished each other a good day and went our separate ways.

And that’s what I mean by today’s title—More good than bad. This man, who doesn’t even know our names, picked up an object off the ground and kept it in his trunk until he saw us again. No reward for doing so except the knowledge he tried, in a little way, to make the world a better place.

And so I choose to fill my head with the hundreds of friendly people we meet on the trail. That seems so much more productive than letting the few bad apples get too much mental real estate.

I do that because I genuinely believe more good than bad exists in this world.

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Books I’m Reading

Jeffrey returns home from a business trip to find Sabine, his wife, has vanished. When the police find her abandoned car and note none of her household possessions are missing, they suspect foul play. The convoluted case twists, making investigators wonder who’s lying and who’s telling the truth—and how is anything connected to Beth, hundreds of miles away, who’s planning to disappear from her violent husband?

Amazon affiliate links result in a small commission to me, though they have no impact on your pricing.

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Interesting Links

Trashed Books Source Library—Sanitation workers in Turkey found books in trash and saved them for their families. Then they placed them on shelves they also found in garbage. That simple idea has grown into a library of over 6,000 books open to the public. What a great story.

Average Household Spend of $92 A Year on Books—As always, take statistics with a grain of salt, but this interesting peek into book spending suggests I’m way above average on buying books. But, then again, I couldn’t tell you anything about TV shows.

Why I Still Use RSS—The title of this post caught my attention because I check Feedly every day to keep up with various blogs and websites. When Facebook first came on the scene, it was a great way to keep track, but as they’ve punished pages more and more to force them to pay to spread their message, RSS is the only way I’ve found reliably to keep up. Bonus—I get to avoid all of the drama on social media.

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Gratuitous Dog Picture

Frankie Suave deep into his favorite morning activity—bird watching. The marsh birds fascinate him as they go about their business in the salt marsh, screeching and squawking as they hunt for their breakfast.

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Background title image courtesy Arto Marttinen via Unsplash