high stepping

At the café I saw a sleek black dog, and I admired the light glancing off his glossy shoulders and the whorls of fur on his narrow chest as he pranced around the legs of the outdoor table. He picked his forefeet up high as if he were stepping through a net held a little ways off the ground, as if he were a very little black horse with a fine gait trained for dressage.

Once I saw the white horses of the Spanish Riding School show their paces. They were very impressive, arching their powerful necks and snapping each foreleg in turn up into a bent curl held for an instant against their chests before thusting it, hoof foremost, back against the sawdusted ground. They floated around the ring with military precision and formal grace centered in that high step. They are trained for that.

On the bus on my way back from the café, an older man got on. He must have been in his 80s. He was saved the high step into the vehicle by a recent design change. The new busses in the fleet are built low to the street just so that elderly and less nimble riders do not have to climb steps. This gentleman, for example, was able to walk almost straight forward off the curb where he had been waiting. But once on the bus, he seemed momentarily confused, as if he had forgotten what he was doing. He looked from side to side, holding the fare in his hand but making no move to place it in the till. Then he pawed in the air with his right foot, black-shod, and found no stair there. But the motion reminded him of the next steps in the bus-boarding dance, and he let his coins fall into the funnel and stepped down the aisle.