Unless I need to set the alarm very early, this is how I wake nearly every day.  He wants out.  He wants breakfast.  He wants a walk.  I don’t have a rug in my room and he shifts his weight, the click of his nails on the floor both polite and insistent.  If I don’t open my eyes he lets out long sighs, but stop shorts of a whine.

Dexter always wins.  His exuberance and good nature are difficult to deny.  In addition, Rosie has been at the vet for several days.  She has a hematoma in her ear that became infected.  (I am hoping she secretly has a trust fund that she has been too shy to tell me about as well.) We can tell that Dex is concerned, though he’s not depressed. We are being gentle with him.  We understand.  We miss her, too.

The dogs and I usually take long, fast walks in the morning in order to keep my heart rate, and backside, up. Dexter doesn’t mind fast, but is impatient with my unwillingness to let him stop and smell, well, everything. The weather this weekend has been beautiful.  Summer, still, but not too hot and little humidity.  So tonight, in order to enjoy the evening and please him, I took him on a slow walk and let him stop and smell as often and as long as he wanted. There were times, as he sniffed seemingly nothing for an inordinate amount of time, that I was reminded of my same resolve and resulting impatience fourteen years ago or so, on visits when I promised my oldest that we could stay at the train store as long as he wanted.

Dexter amuses me in his typically male behavior of marking all territory “mine,” and I indulged him in this, too.  I think he is ridiculous, but he’s quite focused on this task.  Rosie, when she’s with us, looks back over her shoulder at me as he does this very nearly rolling her eyes.  Again, typically, he takes our inability to understand in stride.

He enjoyed the stroll and my patience and the smells.  Even with our slower gait he collapsed, seemingly exhausted, and lay snoring beside me as I was working.  The walk was satisfying for me as well.  As we walked slower, my thoughts came slower.  I noticed houses and gardens that I hadn’t before, though I’ve walked by them dozens of times.  A different dog might be smug with this knowledge.  But not Dexter.  It’s simply not in his nature.

I did not intent to be away so long.  I went to Paris in June and have been distracted since.  More regular posts should follow.