Linguist FAIL

Yesterday when I was walking the dogs, we came across this cute little old lady on a walk with her granddaughter and a little while fluff ball Shih-Tzu thing.  The little dog was yapping a little bit but looked like he might want to say hi, so I asked the lady, "Does he want to say hello?"  (This is something that dog people say to each other to signal that their dogs are friendly and just want to check each other out.)

She looked at me a bit startled and said, "No sé inglés."  (I don't know English.)  Then turned to her granddaughter and said, "Qué dice ella?" (What is she saying?)

So I'm like, "Oh!"  Do it!  Do it!, my brain says.  Break out the terrible and rusty Spanish!  You know you want to!


me:  Uhhhhhh ummmmm quiere.......... decir............... (feeble wave)
Translation:  Uhhhhhhhhhh ummmmmmm does he want............. to say............ (feeble wave as I cannot for the life of me remember the word 'hello' in Spanish)

old lady:  Ah!  Que se lleguen amigos?  (They want to make friends?)
me:  Sí!!

Dogs say hello.  I feel ridiculously stupid for temporarily forgetting how to construct a basic sentence in Spanish.  (Why is it so much harder when you're on the spot?)

I figure:
+2 points for making an attempt to speak Spanish in the real world
-2 points for forgetting the word for hello (seriously - worst linguist ever)
+1 point for understanding the rest of what she said and ending with 'gracias'

So it wasn't a total loss...