8.01.2016

July 31, 2016

White Dog looked at the calendar, "Oh my dog! It will be August in just one more day! Dad's birthday month. The end of summer. Where has all of the time gone?"

Steve rubbed his hand down her back and came away with a fist full of shedding furs. "We still have the Dog Days of Summer to contend with so don't be packing Summer away quite yet."

"Dog Days?" Zsofia asked him, "like special days just for us?"

"Dog Days like in The Old Farmer's Almanac... the traditional period of the Dog Days 40 days beginning July 3 and ending August 11, coinciding with the ancient heliacal (at sunrise) rising of the Dog Star, Sirius. These are the days of the year with the least rainfall in the Northern Hemisphere." Steve answered her.

"So it is scientific to celebrate the Dog Days...and we have missed most of them!" Zso exclaimed. "We have a star?" Pearl yipped and peered out of the window into the bright blue sky.  "We better get busy! There are only a few days left." She turned to White Dog, "How could we have let this slip past? FORTY whole days of celebrating! Geez!"

Steve swept Sachi into his arms. "Let's not waste another second! Come on Little Man it is bath time! We will wash off the dust, clean your ears, change out your tick collar, trim your toes!" The last view we had of Sachi as he disappeared into the bathroom was his growling face over Steve's shoulder saying, "Thanks a lot, Zso!" 

Sachi in reality likes baths and after runs through the house shaking and rolling. It looked like such fun, Bella volunteered to be next. "Who knows," she said to the others, "it might be refreshing." Then was Nilla and then Benson. We ran out of towels so there was a slight break while Steve hung the wet ones out to dry.

We continued the Spa theme with cooling blueberry kefir smoothies. Then White Dog took her turn in the bathtub. We were halfway through the Army and the afternoon was getting long.

The curse of the long plush beautiful double thick white coats (and darker one) is that they take a long time to naturally air dry...even with the vigorous dance of shake, roll, and rub...and a bit of help blotting with towels. We decided the pool party would continue across the week until everyone had been dipped but this evening we had a reached a cutoff for coats to be thoroughly dried before bedtime walks. 

Besides it was time to think about dinner. "Do we get a special Dog Days dinner?" Stormer asked. "Sure," Steve replied. "I will top each bowl with a lovely garnish of sunny summery chopped peaches and strawberries. Sound good?"


1 comment:

Random Felines said...

we think we will avoid baths and just stick to air conditioning :)