The Dog Days of Summer

August has arrived and it did so on quiet feet. Not sure how it snuck by me, but the dog days are here and while I have mixed emotions about the arrival of autumn, I’ve decided not to dwell in the past or the future. Instead, I’m living in the moment and playing hard while the sun is high in the sky.

The thing about summer is that when we are out walking, there are a lot more people (and dogs) out there, too. It’s like everyone crawls out of the woodwork, opens their arms to the sun, and walks around a tad bit happier than they do in February. Since I’m out there every day — rain, shine, or otherwise — I find this phenomenon quite interesting. Really, when it’s cold and rainy out it’s really just as fun as when it’s warm and sunny out. It’s just all a matter of perspective.

I guess I’ve had to learn that in the almost three years we’ve been doing this business. Those first few months were killer. I’d squint against the icy rain, brace my paws on the ground during the wind storms, and find a cool clump of shade when the sun burn the air around me. Now I’ve come to realize that there really isn’t any weather I haven’t seen (or walked in) and there’s nothing horrible about any of it. I mean really…wouldn’t it be boring if it was the same every day? I think they call that Phoenix and from what I’ve heard, I don’t want to live there.

So today, in the first dogged days of August, I enjoyed the cool overcast morning just as much as I enjoyed the hot sun in the afternoon. And I think my attitude is rubbing off on our clients.

First up was Ollie and he likes any kind of weather on any kind of day. His walk started in the cool of that overcast morning I just referred to, but it heated up quite nicely even though the sun didn’t come out.

We walked through the schoolyard by his house, posed by the beautiful sea mural and then wandered down, down, down to the lake. Bummer, though because we didn’t get to go in. Instead, we had to huff it back up the hill to drop Ollie off in time.

Whew! Good thing the sun wasn’t out yet!

The sun did start to make an appearance on our drive home whereupon Gretchen dropped me off so I could eat my brunch while she headed over to Rosie’s house. Rosie, poor girl, had a bit of an upset tummy so the two of them took it slow. Of course, when the sun is out in full force, Rosie always takes it slow.

Today though, she did really well, hiking herself up to the Bradner Gardens where the second round of summer flowers were in bloom. As you can see from the first photo of this post, Rosie likes to look at the flowers in the garden.

Particularly roses…tee hee…

…though she also found the pink ones and the yellow ones and all the ones in between so beautiful she had Gretchen take pictures of them. Gretchen, who has a large collection of flower photos, obliged.

You can see that Rosie liked the flowers so much, she started to drool in the last photo…or maybe it was because of the treat in Gretchen’s pocket!

By the time Gretchen got back to our house to pick me up, there was sun, sun, sun everywhere. So much sun, in fact, that when we walked Zoe, we both got kind of hot! That didn’t stop us though. We found more flowers to pose in front of and Zoe put on her happiest of smiles!

I was happy, too because the sun was out, Zoe was in a good mood, and I think I look really good in purple…

…Zoe does too…look good in purple, that is!

The fun in the sun had just begun because once Zoe went home, we picked up Saber, then walked to Gemma’s house, then went for a nice walk in the park and then…

POOL PARTY!!!!!

As you can tell, we got a little rowdy…especially Saber when I took the tennis ball away. He went from happy to grumpy quickly, but luckily Saber gets over his grumpy really quickly and he, like the rest of us, enjoyed the dog days of summer the rest of the afternoon.

Hope you get a chance to enjoy them too!

Until tomorrow,

Rubin