Still stinking of creek, plus a book review
Summer is a time for chilling down and absorbing biographical doggerel
The last time I was given access to a keyboard, I had just celebrated a birthday. (It is getting close to the time when I will have spent half of my life as a resident of the Mohawk mansion and its expanse of thousands of subyards extending laterally in all directions.) That was technically in the winter, and now summer is two-thirds complete.
When summer season is cancelled, I will miss it yet won’t. I bake easily thanks to my dark coat failing to reflect an adequate proportion of incident sunlight, and often growl at these times about relocating to the mid-latitudes of Baffin Island or Siberia.
The cataclysmic balminess is mainly countercancelled, however, by the appearance of a stagging number of deer, sewer-trolling stink kittens, and other animals that tend to stay inside the house once the good weather arrives in December.
I have been dragging my feet runningwise, with some misgrudgings. Like last summer, I have mostly been walking during the day and taking 20-minute runs in the evening when the rabbits are prowling. I am content to let MAIN MAN trudge off into the far yard on his own, shaking my head at the knowledge that he will dislike the heat, yet will neither drink nor immerse himself in any of the available creekwaters. (If they put sugar, caffeine, and ethanol in the creekwaters, I would have to abstain, but you people would consume nothing else for the rest of your giddy lives. Sooth.)
I am also a little older now, same as last year. And in June, same as last June, I was told at the canine palpation-and-injection center yonder that I was muscular, healthy, and fit. I am also now fully vaccinated; this is not really an effort to help others so much as prevent a grisly neurological downfall if I choose to pummel a stink kitten and incur scratch or bite marks in the melee. Anyway, I am mindful of my advancing years in charting my exercise routine.
I have also been doing some reading! FAVORITE WOMAN presented me with a biography of two dogs named Olive and Mabel along with their Main Man Andrew. I enjoyed it and will supply reasons.
(Full disclosure: I actually ordered the audio version of the book online, so claiming to have read it would be materially dishonest. I may be sharp, but if you really think a dog is capable of reading, you have taken your credulity with this cutesy shtick just a bridge too far.)
The story is that Main Man Andrew traditionally paid for kibble by talking about sports like golf, which is like squirrel-chasing without the excitement. Sadly, he lost his kibblestream in 2020 when sports events were widely overruled with prejudice thanks to people posting signs about a devastating strain of kennel cough.
At the time, he had very few online friends. Now he has close to half a million on one yapsite alone. This is owed to Main Man Andrew allowing Olive and Mabel to speak their truths.
These dogs are Labrador retrievers. Labs are smart, yet not. As in, they will quickly appreciate what an invisible fence does and then charge through it anyway just to say hello. But they are agreeable fellows, and their only truly bad habit is eating everything in sight.
And concerning the breed, I will not say I was chastened to learn via a hard-drive dive that MAIN MAN has supplied past canine live-ins with neckerchief shirts, too. I will only point out that I could use a somewhat expanded wardrobe.
According to Olive and Mabel’s book testimony, Main Man Andrew did not expect to kick off this project. This happened when he was bonding more than ever with the dogs as his workload diminished at the onset of kennel cough signage, something many people also noticed to their disdain. Main Man Andrew made two videos that, ironically, went globally viral. The Olive and Mabel series now has 29 installments on YouTube and many millions of approving glances.
These videos are an excellent way to pass the time between meals and swims, in my regard.
Overall, the book enforces the reality that dogs are people without the baggage. I suggest studying this one at length. It has been known to make grumpy human runners chog up (sp) in raw appreciation of the love circulating everywhere even in times of mass isolation.
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