The Stars Have Aligned!

Yesterday the stars aligned just for me. It wasn't actively precipitating, it was cold but not dangerously so, and Mom was feeling well. Do you know what that means? She finished her coffee and got dressed, and then she put her boots on. I thought she was going to go someplace dull, like the supermarket. Then she grabbed my scooper, and I just smiled and wagged my tail like anything!

We went out side and brought in the trash cans. I tried to lead her back out onto the sidewalk, but she still outweighs me and was able to get me to go toward the car. I was so happy! I wasn't sure where we were going but I knew that I would love it. I always love anyplace we go in the car. She got me up onto the seat and I wagged my tail the whole way there. She had to turn up the radio.

We got to the Blue Hills Reservation, which was a frozen paradise. We got out of the car and were almost immediately greeted by a very excited English Springer Spaniel named Reggie. (Reggie's person gave a huge grin when he heard my name, but he and Mom didn't talk baseball. That could be dangerous in Boston!) Reggie and I ran around and played for a good twenty minutes. Reggie runs fast. He's about a year older than I am, and he's so well behaved that his dad doesn't need to keep him on a leash. Mom says we're working on it but I'm not there yet, but Reggie didn't seem to mind at all. He was content enough to stay where I could reach him. I loved playing with my new friend, and I made sure that I leaned on his person good and hard to show my gratitude.

After Reggie and I had played for a while, it was time for him to get going, so Mom and I went for a little hike. It wasn't a particularly challenging hike. We just took the trail that went around Houghton's Pond. Mom said that given how icy the trails were she wanted to stick to relatively flat terrain, and I can understand that. I was able to pull her along like a dog sled in a couple of places, which you'd think she'd enjoy. Two-legs - go figure.

The short, flat, icy trail didn't hinder our enjoyment much. There were plenty of things for me to do. Last week's ice storm knocked more than enough sticks for all the dogs in the metropolitan Boston area. One of the first ones that I found was a huge stick, with lots of little sticks sticking up off of it. I carried it around for a while. Then I tried to drop it, but I couldn't! Some of the other little sticks had gotten tangled in my collar. Mom was nervous - one of the was stuck across my throat, so she broke that one off. Once I was unstuck, I picked the stick up and trotted off with it until I found something else to sniff.

I also learned that the cold weather hasn't kept the horses out of the park either. One of them left a huge deposit. I tried to roll in it, because that would have been just the best perfume for the short ride home! It would have stayed in the car forEVER! Unfortunately, or fortunately from Mom's frankly incomprehensible point of view, the deposit was frozen absolutely solid. It might have been a rock. Oh well. I guess one can't really have everything.