Summer

When you were a kid, summer meant eating your ice cream or popsicle fast enough that it wouldn’t drip down your arm. Or maybe you remember whining to your parents that you were bored, and they responded, “Wait until you get older, time goes faster.” Or perhaps you spent summer days racing up and down dirt hills with your siblings on your Huffy Sweet Thunder bicycle.

However, as an adult, you often fall asleep before it gets dark so you can get up extra early and walk us before it gets too hot. And, you spend extra time protecting us from and checking for the ticks that warm weather brings. You (and we) need to process and adjust to SO MANY MORE PEOPLE AND DOGS at the places you’re used to quietly enjoying with your beloved dogs.

Last weekend, as my human pulled up to our favorite park, she was surprised how full it was when she spotted an off-leash dog wandering around the picnic area. Not one of the many people setting up for a celebration was paying attention. 

She kept me in the car and drove to the spot where the park rangers were talking and reported the dog. It’s one of the many reasons she loves our park; the rangers take off-leash dogs very seriously. Even the nicest ones could cause wildlife harm, scare an innocent child, or incite a bicycle crash.

Everything in her gut said we need to find a different place to park, so we went to the business lot that’s closed on the weekend and hoped the conversations she’d had with employees were trustworthy, that they’d never tow her.

It was the perfect weather, not too hot or chilly, and we meandered, I sniffed, and golly, it was delightfully quiet for both of us. My human clipped my long leash on me in a field so I could enjoy exploring, and from a distance, she could see by the way I was sniffing I was going in for a roll. I’ve been so good about not rolling in poop but sometimes, a Mabel has to do what a Mabel loves to do.

I gleefully squirmed and rolled and wiggled. Then I got up to sniff my treasure. And I excitedly twerked and twisted again. By the time my human caught up to me, I was covered in goose poop (she knows more than she’d like now about poo), I had globs of goop inside my ear, smeared on my neck and shoulder, covering my collar, coating my harness. I even had number two all down my right side.

Thankfully, the wipes she kept in the car were much more effective in cleaning me than she thought.

A half package later, a me and gear bath, a human shower, laundry and car wash, we were on with our day to enjoy our backyard where my human FINALLY figured out what sun and shade mean to plants and which dog-friendly flowers don’t attract bees (I like to eat them and the internet was wrong last summer about marigolds and zinnias.)

We hope, however you spend your summer days, they fill you with love, sunshine, and dogs. If you’re looking for a vegetarian-friendly dog treat, I love my Peanut Butter & Blueberry Bark Pouch.

*This article also contains an affiliate link to the wipes my humans used to remove my pittie perfume.