Dogs are Funny (People, too!)

If the dogs hadn't roused me at 5:15 this morning for a very early feeding, I wouldn't have seen the full moon setting over the mountains to the west.



Lacking clarity of mind at that hour, I forgot to feed them their usual 1/2 dog biscuit after they finished their breakfast. I did remember to take them outside. Then we all came in and went back to sleep.

At 9:00 we went for our morning walk. It's a fine, bright morning, and the pleasantly cool. I wore a thin plaid flannel lobsterman's shirt which I've owned, by my reckoning, about 24 years. On my lower half I wore the grey cotton knit long pants of indeterminate purpose. Are they meant to be worn in public or private? For sleeping or lounging or exercising? I don't really know, so I do everything in them. On my head I had my large-brimmed straw hat that shades my face and protects me from the deer flies.

I know perfectly well--and don't much care--that to our neighbours, the summer people and year-round residents, I must look like a lakeside eccentric. A junior-grade Katherine Hepburn from On Golden Pond, who at any moment might start wittering on about "The loons! The loons!" (I admit I can mimic the loon cry...most recently heard very early yesterday morning while I was still abed.) But ours is a quiet and secluded road, our part is private, so it's only local traffic, and I wander about in strange garb that I wouldn't dare be seen in any place else. At least I don't go out in my bathrobe...however tempting it might be.

As soon as we returned from our stroll and I unleashed the dogs, they rushed over to the kitchen counter where the dog biscuit bag sits. Yes, precisely 4 and 1/2 hours after my heinous sin of ommission, they still remembered that they'd not got their morning treat. And they wanted me to know that. With many apologies, I did what they told me to do and handed out the bones.

Lately I've been adding up all their vocabulary words--human speech that they recognise and respond to--in a addition to the ever-popular bone. Here they are, in no particular order:

Ruth
Jewel
No!
Let's eat
Walk
Need to go outside?
Sit
Lie down
Off!
Ice cream
Go to bed
Come (Usually just a name call suffices.)

The one we need to work on is Stop barking! Jewel is our watch dog, a role she takes a bit too seriously. Ruth doesn't really bark. She squeals when she's happy, and yowls if she sees a Monster in the yard.

Here's Jewel, urging me to log off from Facebook. She has issues with my laptop. If it's on my lap, she can't be in my lap, which is her favourite place in the world.



And Ruth, looking sweet and soulful.



They don't care how funny I look when I take them walking. And they're so very attractive, they more than compensate for my decidedly odd appearance!

The Winnipesaukee swimmer completed his 42-mile (give or take) journey up and down the lake.