|
People often ask us about our mascot - The Laughing Dog - and where we got it. It's a peculiar story and one that actually started with Michael. This is his account as told to me on the origin of the Laughing Dog legend. “When Bill and I were working on getting the store ready to open back in February of 1998, we were doing a bunch of construction on the inside of the store. We’d been laying vinyl flooring in the bathroom late one afternoon after painting all day in the front part of the store. The fumes from the paint seemed to be getting stronger, no doubt amplified by the odors from the vinyl glue I was using. The fumes really didn’t seem to bother Bill and if anything just made him laugh all that much more. Bill disappeared somewhere and as I was putting the finishing touches on the vinyl floor, I apparently became overcome by the fumes and passed out; at least that’s what Bill said. While I was out I had the strangest vision of a large, funny looking dog hovering over me looking down and laughing his head off as I lay there on the floor. His laugh was a mesmerizing one that I wouldn’t describe as scary, but I would call intoxicating. As I regained consciousness this dog I was seeing morphed into Bill. How strange! I never said anything about it to Bill because I didn’t want to tell him he looked like a dog." Michael went on to say "later that night as I lay asleep, another vision came to me. It was that dog laughing at me again! He was there in my subconscious for most of the night and I awoke with the image of that laughing dog burned into my psyche. It was then that I knew that that dog, that Laughing Dog, would be our mascot!” And so it began. It’s funny that other employees have reported encounters with the dog as well. Once when I was closing down the store at the end of a long day, I heard a rustling sound toward the back of the store. I went to see what the noise was and noticed a box of dog biscuits spilled on the floor. We keep these on the top shelf above the wheels for special canine visitors, so they aren’t exactly easy to reach. As I was looking at the mess, I heard laughing coming from the rear of the store and I turned and saw what I believe was looked like a big ugly dog leaving out the back door. I went to chase after it and as I was nearing the door the laughing stopped just as Bill entered through the back door. I told him what I heard and told him what had happened with the dog biscuits and asked if he had seen the dog, but he just laughed boisterously and told me I had lifted to many Huffy’s that day and my brain was stressed. You see, we hear him often and some people have actually claimed to have seen him, but we've never gotten close. Mike Creasy heard the Laughing Dog during one of our Moonlight rides but only caught a fleeting glimpse of him riding off into the forest. Bill was about a half-mile in front of Mike that night, but he never saw the Laughing Dog. Teddy swears he saw the Laughing Dog driving our shuttle van down from the mountain one day as he was heading up the mountain. But Bill was the only other person driving that day so we know it couldn’t have been the Laughing Dog behind the wheel. We all believe in the Laughing Dog but there are those who think that he lives in our imagination. We get a fleeting glimpse of him occasionally, hear him often, and see evidence of his presence almost daily. Funny though that Bill is never around when any of this stuff goes on…. We’ll keep you posted on the next encounter with the Laughing Dog. That's our story and we're sticking to it. Tom Horsch
|
|||
|
ADVENTURE
DAMASCUS |
