A Tale of Two Days in One

I'm a literary dog.  Not only are books tasty (I've gnawed on travel books, shredded the dust cover of Pa's favorite Keith Richards book, and "edited" another book that Pa was reading but not enjoying), but I can also quote from them.  The opening line from Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" sums up what my day was like on Sunday.

"It was the best of times..."

Johnny and I Vie For Pa's Attention

Me at Old Westbury Gardens

Sunday was Dog Days at Old Westbury Gardens.  For two glorious hours my family and I wandered around the estate taking pictures, sniffing interesting smells, and bunking noses with a whole pack of strange dogs (well, I bunked noses with the dogs, my family just gave them pats on the head as they passed by).  Speaking of bunking noses with other dogs, I ran into two of my Golden Retriever friends:  Emma Rose and Johnny.  Emma Rose is very refined and is more than happy to bunk noses and move on.  Johnny, on the other paw, is, well, a lot like me.  He loves to roughhouse!  We ran back and forth on our leashes, boxed, and then took turns trying to knock the legs out from under each other (Pa calls this technique submarine-ing). After one boxing match, Johnny flopped down on the grass and started rolling on his back.  I took advantage of the situation and scurried over to Johnny's mom for pets.  Then Johnny got up and ran to my Pa for pets.  Not wanting to miss out on any attention, I then horned in on Pa and Johnny and forced Pa to pet me as well as Johnny (good thing he has two hands).

Into the Woods

I also played a trick on my family.  When we were walking through the Boxwood Gardens, I made a bee line for the reflecting pool.  For one frantic moment, my family actually thought that I was going to jump head first into the smelly water.  I smiled and wagged my tail at the fun.

"...it was the worst of times."

Despite all the fun I had at the Gardens, there was something missing:  my bff Mecki.  You see, my friend Mecki and I have meet up at both the spring and fall Dog Days every year since we first met.  It's always an entertaining event:  Mecki climbs all over me, I whop him on the head with my paw, and we fight over who is going to lead our little pack as we walk through the estate.  But Mecki's mom (who always brings me a special cookie) was on vacation, so I didn't get to meet up with him or his new little brother Bastille (though I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a tad but concerned about meeting a pup who has been described to me as a "vampire piranha" who is actively spitting out his baby teeth left and right).

After the Bath

Not getting to play with Mecki and meet Bastille was disappointing, but something even worse was about to happen to me.  On the way home from the Gardens, my family stopped off at the doggy spa and I was unceremoniously tossed into a bathtub and scrubbed down with soap and water.  It goes without saying that I was completely devastated by this turn of events.  All the lovely smells I had collected over the past weeks (not to mention those I had collected over the previous few hours at the Gardens) were gone; washed down the drain.  And if that wasn't bad enough, I was so exhausted from gallivanting around the Gardens that I didn't have the strength to put up a fight while Ma and Pa washed me (the way I see it, if I'm going to be wet and unhappy, everyone involved should be wet and unhappy too).

So there you have it, two very different days wrapped up into one.  I had a blast at Old Westbury Gardens and I had a bath and missed out on playing with Mecki and Bastille.  What can I say?  I guess you can't win them all (though Sister did take advantage of my clean state to take some new head shots).