Py loves the elements!

The following is a guest post by my creative colleague Bob.

I looked around the rental car. Wet socks hung from the sun visors, and soaked pants, jackets, and T-shirts were flung over the backs of the seats. I had duct-taped my sneakers to the heater vents on the dashboard in the hope they would dry, but now it looked as if someone had gotten stuck while trying to crawl head-first through the dashboard. A car like this in Seattle would soon be covered in slugs yearning for its muggy comfort.

Yet there sat my new dog, soaking wet, on a damp towel, smiling, peering around, or pressing her nose in glee to the already fogged-up windows. Every time I slowed down or put on the turn signal, she perked up at the possibility of getting back out into the rain. If I lowered her window, she’d stick her head out, then pull it back in and soak me with a high-spirited shake.

I adopted my dog from PETA just as Hurricane Floyd, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes ever recorded, made landfall off the North Carolina coast. I was visiting PETA headquarters while traveling by rental car between Norfolk and New York. I planned to adopt a dog when I returned home, but then I came across Py, who was being fostered by PETA and seemed like the perfect dog, so our plans changed.

Floyd chased us up the coast. It dumped more than 16 inches of rain in the Norfolk area, which had been evacuated. The speed limit on I-95, the major north-south freeway, was reduced to 35 miles per hour. Fortunately, the car rental agency had upgraded me to a full-size Oldsmobile, probably because all the Neons and Geo Metros were bobbing like corks in the rising floodwaters. I'd had the foresight to buy a bag of towels and blankets from a thrift store to cover the seats.

At every stop, my new dog wanted to walk and explore, so we did. Soon all my clothes were soaked. My socks squished in my sneakers. Near Coney Island, we walked along a bay that the wind and rain were whipping into a froth. By then, I'd figured out to wear plastic bags over dry socks inside my wet sneakers during our walks. There was no longer anything dry in the car.

Once I got Py home, I walked with her twice a day, come rain or come shine; and since I lived in Seattle, it was mostly come rain. Py delights in exploring new places and checking out changes in old places. She loves to follow her nose, and when smells beckon, Py follows―weather be damned.

I soon learned about dog parks and the people who visit them. A few people I saw almost every day with their dogs. But most people, the fair-weather dog walkers, only took their dogs out on nice days. Most days, there were several dozen dogs in the large park; on sunny days, there were hundreds.

I began to wonder what these fair-weather dogs did during the long rainy spells and realized that they were probably trapped in their houses, bored and longing to get out and about to visit with friends and sniff out the latest news. It seems to me that adding a dog to your family means making some concessions to the dog's needs and preferences. It's a small sacrifice to buy a weather-proof jacket, a stack of old towels and even a raincoat for your dog, then follow him or her through the rain to places you've never been to before.