dawn at Lake Ella

2/19/2020 – Wednesday

Keely was on a tear, which in dog walking terms means she was going off course every few minutes. While our route is rarely exactly the same day to day, weaving in and out of various buildings and taking different forks in the walkways, today she was very erratic in her choices.

It would be easy to hand wave this off as “random doggo brain settings” but then I noticed, wow, a lot of damp leaves all over the sidewalk. We had a cloudy day yesterday with only mild rain, but after three days of regular rainfall, everything is damp and tossed about. Shiny wet leaves all over the place, no doubt to be blown away by the park custodians at some point closer to dawn (I have never figured out their exact schedule, which is interesting given how often I am at Lake Ella).

Point being: wet leaves, wet grass, wetness everywhere. And Keely, well, she’s not a water dog. At all. Hates most forms of it that are not in her water bowl, in fact. I think her desire to walk “outside the lines” was an attempt to avoid icky wet things.

She’s not persnickety about anything, really, other than this.

The village green was out (wet grass!) and the sidewalks were suspect (wet leaves!) so she kept trying to steer us into the road and while traffic is low — mostly cops coming and going from TPD headquarters — I still refuse to disobey my mother’s ancient edicts about DO NOT PLAY IN THE STREET.

Which is to say it was primarily a tug-of-war morning.