Wet Paws, Towel Rubs, and an Old Dog

 

Rain or Snow, We Are Out

Today the dog and I went for a walk.

It was one of those winter days where the weather couldn't quite make up its mind. Snow, rain, wet ground, cold air. We went anyway. Rain or snow, we are out.

I took a few photos along the way, and when we finally got back home, Dixie was wet and ready for one of her favourite parts of a bad-weather walk: the towel rub-down.

She leaned right into it.

Dixie loves getting rubbed down with a towel. There's something about watching a wet dog happily lean into a towel that makes coming home feel pretty good. The walk might be cold and miserable, but then we're inside, getting warm, and she's enjoying every second of being dried off.

Lately, my mom has been walking Dixie too. That's a blessing for us, but I think it's also a good little bit of activity for my mom. Dixie is fortunate that she has people willing to get her outside.

I was reminded of that recently in a way I wasn't expecting.

While I was doing deliveries, a senior asked if I could kill her dogs.

That shocked me.

Then the next thing I knew, I saw the dogs heading down the street on their own as if they had decided, Well, if you're not taking us for a walk, we're going ourselves.

Their owner called them back.

Nothing.

They just kept walking.

She tried to pick one of them up and ended up faceplanting into the ground.

For a moment, I wondered if I should put in an incident report. It was a busy delivery, though, and after asking around, I was told the incident was separate from the delivery. So I kept working.

But I didn't just forget about it.

The whole thing bothered me. The dogs were yapping, the owner seemed to have almost no control over them, and when she called them, they barely seemed to notice.

It made me think about Dixie.

Sometimes I complain that I don't have enough control over her. She has her own ideas about things, that's for sure. But after seeing those dogs walking down the street without even flinching when their owner called them, I realized we actually have a pretty huge amount of control with Dixie.

She's not exactly the dog I imagined I'd have.

I wanted a dog that would sleep on the bed.

Dixie has always been Dixie.

And now she's becoming an old dog.

This winter might be the first one when she can no longer get herself onto the bed. She's stopped bouncing up like she used to because her hips are hurting. There are days when she struggles to make it up the back stairs.

That's difficult to watch.

But she's still happy.

She still wants her walks. She still gets outside. She comes home, gets her towel rub, heads over to her dog bed and sleeps like an old dog who has accomplished everything she needed to accomplish that day.

And honestly, maybe she has.

Dixie gets us out of the house.

She gets my mom walking. She gets me walking in rain and snow when it would be much easier to stay inside. She gets us moving, looking around and sometimes stopping long enough to take a few photographs.

I like her a lot.

I know Kim does too.

We're lucky to have Dixie in our family, and I think Dixie is lucky to have us.

So here's today's wisdom:

Get your walking in, dogs.

Rain or snow, we're going out.

And when we get home, the towels will be waiting.