Celeste's walk in the park

Today while we were out walking, Celeste met, close up, an adult male Siberian Husky out with his owner. He was big and stout, robust and authoritative. Celeste thought she wanted to fight and started to assert herself, hair standing on end and growling, trotting stiffly toward him, but the male wasn't having any of that. She tried to rush him, but he stood his ground and gave her a chest-butt that knocked her off her feet. That scared her bad enough that she peed her little pants in the process and crept away down the sidewalk. The male wasn't offended; I think he was amused by the idea that a 5-month-old pup who's just loosing her milk teeth would think she could take on an older dog that was twice her size.

Later, in the park, we met a couple of ladies with their dogs. They invited Celeste to play, so in spite of worrying about personalities and age differences, we let her run with the other dogs. Celeste loved it, although she was continually falling over her own feet and landing on her nose. She ran with the others across a shallow channel cut for irrigation, and fell in it head first. She is such a puppy, still. Her long, gangly legs and uncoordinated play make her seem younger than she is. The dogs played hard, running and jumping for about a half hour, then Celeste came back to us, completely whupped. She's still snoozing here at my feet, as I write this.

Celeste is in love with green grass. The grass in the park is overgrown and damp, irrigated weekly by channels cut into the turf, then filled in later, after the irrigation is finished for the week. Trees are scattered across the park and a few larger than life metal sculptures loom up unexpectedly among the trees. In contrast, the grass that grows close to our apartment building is kept cut and manicured by whomever owns the street-side plot, and she loves to walk through it. Short and springy as a plush carpet, she bounces across it, leaping and flipping, almost giggling at the tickle of it under her feet. As we walk on the bike path, she frequently takes little detours onto the grass and races back and forth, mouth open, a big grin spread spread across her face. Then she bounces back onto the bike path, and hops backwards in front of me, while I walk forward. She turns her body in in spirals, and leaps, laughing, back onto the grass.

Simple pleasures are the best.