Fickle (and other words that begin with “f”)…

(I know what you’re thinking, but trust me, my mind isn’t there so come back over to where I’m standing and we can continue on with this blog…)

The weather forecast this morning confused me. Rain and 70 degrees.

Let me say that again. Rain and 70 degrees. That’s a rarity around these parts, but the forecasters were not wrong. The weather was downright fickle today — moments of soaking rain followed by momentary muggy grayish sun breaks that were chased away by thick droplets of rain. Weird. On days like this, I ponder my blog topic and found myself rolling the word fickle around on my tongue. “What are some other words that begin with ‘f’?” I asked Gretchen.

She lifted her brow a bit and then said, “There’s lots of them. Why don’t you try to think of some.”

I swear, once a teacher always a teacher. But I did as I was told and realized that frenzy was a good word for the way Woobie runs out the front door when we first pick her up. She’s usually so excited to see us, she spins frenetically (hey there’s another) and scurries down to the door where Gretchen puts on her leash.

Then she flies out the door and looks for the car because she knows that we’re going to drive to Ollie’s house.

And then there’s finicky, a fitting word for Ollie who fidgeted in the raincoat we brought for and eventually refused to move forward. “Fine,” Gretchen said and took off the raincoat and his harness. “You’ll just have to get wet, I guess.”

But luckily, that’s when the weather changed course, the rain cleared out, and this kind of oppressive warmth descended on us for the remainder of our stroll. Ollie felt validated for his pout about the coat and Woobie just rolled her eyes before deciding that we all just needed to keep moving.

Another word that seemed fitting today was friendship or maybe first friendship because I got to meet and walk with Rosie today. But first, I need to back up. Rosie had a rough night. She broke out in hives and her face swelled up like a puff pastry. No one knows for sure what happened — she inhaled something that caused the allergic reaction or a spider snuck up and bit her. Regardless, she was pumped with Benadryl and therefore was a wee bit fuzzy today.

Gretchen decided to take advantage of Rosie’s fuzziness and walked her (slowly since Rosie wasn’t moving very quickly) over to our house whereupon I got to meet her. Rosie’s usually not super friendly when she’s on leash, but since she was kind of in a fog, she didn’t have a lot of fight in her. Instead, she just looked at me, I looked at her, we both put our noses in the air to catch a sniff of each other and started walking.

Fine. Yep, everything was fine, fine, fine.

Of course, at photograph time, Gretchen kept us a few feet apart just to be certain we’d remain friends on our first walk together.

Generally, when we walk Gemma with Saber it’s time to frolic, but today we just walked, which seemed to be exactly what everyone needed.

Of course, Saber wanted to feed on the wet long strands of grass, while Gemma and I wondered what he was doing.

We finished our walking, but then Gretchen promised me one last word that began with a “f.” Can you think what it might be? FETCH!!!

Until tomorrow,

Rubin