Dog Days

Well, I guess it's only fair that I write about dogs after a post about cats. Dogs are on my mind for a couple of reasons this morning. The "dog days of summer" get all the publicity, but to me the dog days of winter are much more problematic, and this season's dog days are not only upon us, but with the fervor of a pit bull, I'm afraid (and is it possible for me to utter or write the words "pit bull" without adding "I'm afraid"?).

March weather in Cleveland is famously schizophrenic: anybody over the age of two has stories about t-shirt wearing days followed by blizzard nights. You get teases of spring/summer here and there only to be slapped down by six inches of wet heavy snow within the hour. A blizzard in January is par for the course; you take the beating and survive. But one in March, though hardly unexpected, smacks of true cruelty on Mother Nature's part. To show you just how bats Cleveland's March weather can be, and to show the power of my suggestion, take yesterday for example. The added burden of a late Ash Wednesday in March only made yesterday nastier: cold windy rain all day. I even found myself telling people I'd prefer snow--which utterance, with any pondering, I would admit is insane, but it was nasty and hyperbole's my sidekick. But I didn't mean it, I swear. Today I woke up to the radio telling me two to four inches of snow tonight and another six to ten (very wet, very heavy snow--true Saint Bernard dog days of winter stuff) tomorrow. Believe me, after all the snow removing (honestly I don't know if it's shoveling or shovelling and I'm too weather-beaten at the moment to look it up or even click spell-check) I've done this year, the forty-plus years of hard-earned wisdom that tell me it'll all be gone with a fifty degree day probably next Monday does nothing for me right now other than add to the out and out bi-polarness that's blowing in the wind these days.

Okay, I just interrupted my scribbling here to go outside and cleanse myself by flipping double birds at the skies for five minutes. Cleanse indeed: it's still raining, and believe me, I apologized profusely to the rains and sang paeans to their goodness, but I think to no avail (one thing I can't stand, especially now because the change is on its way, is people in winter who say about the rain, "Good thing it's not snow. If it were, we'd be getting three feet of the stuff!").

The other reason I'm thinking about dogs today is that it's the 37th birthday of my beloved boyhood dog, Amie. I point you to last year's birthday post about the lovable mutt. So, this now being Lent, and the true dog days of winter, I dedicate my great efforts at survival/sanity these next few snowy days to the memories of the late Amie and Otis Lloyd Floyd, (the truly legendary pooch from my college days), and to the still-kicking-though-God-knows-how Fitz, my sister's family's little canine--three more neurotic, physically and emotionally-addled dogs you'll never pet; the holy triumvirate of dogs in my lifetime. Bark and act crazy on me, lady and gentlemen--I'll be doing so vicariously through you.