Look out below!

Here is how I look when I have been swimming and running. It is similar to how I look when I accidentally almost do myself in.

My Person says I need climbing gear or longer toe nails or less enthusiasm for high-risk adventures. This might have something to do with the fact that today I fell out of a tree at the dog park. About a 12 foot drop. Aren't I remarkable?

How, you might ask, did I get so high up a tree? Easy, I would reply. I ran!

The dog park has lots of big old cottonwoods, those great water-loving trees with complicated, bank-stabilizing root systems. Well, the river rises and the river falls and sometimes those trees stand knee-deep in water and sometimes the river rushes by and drags away the sand. And after a few – or even many – years the roots don't have so much sand to hold on to and the big old cottonwoods begin to slant a little. Or a lot. Some of the dog park cottonwoods stand at about a 45 degree angle, their angle of repose for now, and just the perfect angle for an intrepid red dog to run right up.

The cottonwoods start out broad and then they begin to taper. I was running up every cottonwood I could find and making a neat U-turn just as the trunk was almost too narrow for a maneuver like that and then running down again as fast as I could. And then on to the next tree.

I was scaring my Person a bit, and Tasha's Person too. Tasha was there but not climbing - she's a more cautious sort and she's not sturdy like me. One might even call her delicate. Anyway, I had this scared-ish audience and I just couldn't resist continuing my tree climbing, especially since I got a treat every time I made it back to terra firma.

Then my great trick turned into a great fall. I ran too far up a tree and the trunk got too tapered and my U-turn went a bit wobbly and then I sailed through the air and all one could hear was the collective intake of breath by my watchers and the plaintive call "Finnegan!" I was a bit crumpled in the sand with my tail tucked and my ears back and I was as scared as everyone else. At first. Then I tried out all my movable parts and they still moved and I tried out my non-moving parts and they still didn't move and I tried out my ability to eat treats and that was unimpaired so I popped up, good as new!

My Person says she's going to start carrying a giant blue IKEA bag to the dog park to use as a portable stretcher just in case one of my adventures has a bad end. I think she worries too much. Doesn't she know that trees are for climbing?

Par-tay

I thought you'd like to meet some of my human family. This is not a six-legged human relative - I don't think I have any six-legged relatives - but a group of several of them all hugger mugger. This is an uncle-cousin-cousin group plus one little red dog on top.

We were having a birthday party for my cousin. He is 14. I am only in the four to five age range, but the exact information escapes me and therefore everyone who knows me. I cannot even imagine being 14! That is really a lot of dog years.

It was great celebration. There was food on the table and below, dishes to be washed (and I make a fine prewash cycle), there were pile-ons and presents and a pizza party the night before with movies I slept through and a trip to the dogpark (everybody sing!) that I didn't sleep through.

It was the best sort of weekend for a quiche, pizza and family loving dog like me!

Dog park

My Person sings me a song. She made it up herself and she calls it Dog Park. It goes something like this:

"Dog park, dog park
Dog park, dog park
Dog park, dog park
Dooooooooog park!"

What this ditty lacks in grace, imagination, variation or lyricism, it makes up in being short and to the point. This makes me happy. And what else makes me happy is that she sings it before we go to - you guessed it - the dog park!

And here I am now, fresh from a chorus or two of our favorite song and ready to run my little red heart out.

After this it will be time to head home for the evening meal. I can feel another song coming on:

"Super supper, super supper...."
I bet you know the rest!

Oh to be free

See the wild creature trot down the woodland path? A fox you wonder, or could it be...a wild Finnegan?

I was enjoying a solitary hike (solitary as long as I was looking forward since I was being trailed by my Person as usual). I was thinking how nice it might be to live here, alone and wild, wandering and sniffing all the day long, hunting and scuttling through the shadows at night.

What fun! Especially if my Person would show up every 12 hours with a nice dish of food. And if we could move my cushion down here.

Come to think of it I could use the bed too. And the couch. And I like the lawn chair for napping and squirrel duty. And I would kind of miss having Ollie to pester, even though there are plenty of things down in this woods to chase. I just have a feeling some of them might chase me right back. So I guess I will trail my Person back home after all!

What dogs do for fun

That is an easy one. Dogs do about anything for fun. And for treats! Like going swimming even when they are non-swimmers. And climbing trees even when they aren't climbers.

This little bit of late summer fun is going to be gone too soon and the ice crystals will be sticking to your forehead where river water splashes once sparkled. Frigid winds will howl out of Manitoba and blow you right off that tree perch. (And it will hurt when you land on that frozen sand!)

So go have a little frolic in the sun and act like a little red dog while you can!

Dog daze

I don't know if it is still summer or not but it is chilly enough to make me think it might be getting close to autumn. So I have decided to get in a summer's worth of lawn chair napping in one afternoon.

My Person is completely ignoring me but since she is cleaning the basement I figure I am better off right where I am, doing just what I am doing. I am not allowed in the basement so my interest in it's hygiene is slim.

Adric spends quite a bit of time down there. As a matter of fact, all three cats sneak down there on a regular basis and then I hear what sounds like sand flying around. Then the cats come flying up the stairs as fast as they can and in a state of great joy. Who knows what they have been doing down there.

Well, pondering the ways and whys of cats is enough to put a dog to sleep so I'd better continue my snooze before it gets too cold to!