Monday, October 18, 2010

Wet Doggy Morning...

This morning I woke as usual at 3 am, and stumbled out with the dogs for their morning walk.  It was foggy outside, with very limited visibility.  Everything was soaking wet from a night of drizzle (and we recorded 0.17 inches of precipitation, so it must have been nearly continuous all night).

The three field spaniels were all about the smells, enhanced greatly by the wet ground and air.  For our entire morning walk, those three brown noses never got more than an inch from the ground. 

Race, our border collie, was another matter altogether.  He couldn't care less about the wet ground and air.  For him, it's all about the pine cone.  He rushed out (off leash) when I opened the door, and scampered under the pine trees until he found a nice, freshly-fallen cone.  At one point he reluctantly lifted a leg to pee – reluctantly because this broke his concentration on the most important thing: staring at the pine cone, waiting for me to kick it.  I kicked it, and he happily chased off after it, boring through the mist like a bullet.  Once he caught it, he ran around the yard for five minutes of sheer joy over his pine cone victory.  Then he dropped it on the driveway and stared intensely at it, waiting for me to kick it again.

When it was time to come in, Race continued the pine cone game until he realized that I was about to go inside.  Then you could almost see the gears turning in his little head: “Uh oh!  We're about to go in!  And I need to poo!  I better go do it right now!!!”  And off he goes, running at about 100 miles per hour up the hill to his favorite spot under some manzanitas, poos in record time (the field spaniels can take up to 3 or 4 minutes at this, but Race is done in 10 seconds, tops).  Then he zooms even faster down the hill and up to the door, waiting to be let in.

Mornings just wouldn't be the same without the dogs...

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