a lovely day in january

A lovely day in January
(or "How to Take Your Mind Off Your Winter Weather for a Minute")
1/23/05

Picture yourself in a boat on a river...no, make that a quiet ocean bay in Southern California, in a plastic yellow kayak. Temperature is perfect, low/mid 70s maybe. Your blue merle boy is laying in the bow just basking in the sun with a big grin and nose in high gear. As you pass a marker buoy topped with a big cormorant drying his wings, your dog gets real wide eyed and starts whining. He WANTS it!

A little further on, some yacht guys drinking wine on their boat ask about your dog as you pass. You tell them he just turned 14 and they decide he needs a BIG dog biscuit! And they just happen to have some with them. They hold it down to him, thinking he will stand up for it and you tell them he can't. No problem, the guy steps over onto his boat's dive deck and puts a giant milkbone in your dog's mouth, now even more mpressed that the dog is so obviously comfortable in the boat. Your dog's probably never had a biscuit that big and he spends the next 10 minutes chasing crumbs between his paws.

After a while it's getting hot rowing, you've sweated and wiped your face off, along with all your sunscreen. You know you're going to regret that but there's not much you can do. So you just slow down to let the breeze cool you off, and bob up and down for a bit watching the bait jump and keeping an eye out for sea lions. None today. Passing by the sculler's dock, you see a white pelican that you've never seen around here before, usually you just see brown ones. There's lots of gulls and more cormorants. Your dog would jump out after them if he could, his ears are up and his nose is working hard. But by the time you get around the island and into the main channel, he's snoozing in the sun. He doesn't even see the hundreds of surf scoter ducks flocked together, but you watch them chase each other for a while. People in other boats pass by and wave, parents point out the doggie to their kids. Doggie doesn't care, he's in dreamland until the wake of a big yacht bumps you around a bit, just enough to slap the hull and get his attention .

The rest of the way to the beach, he is back to basking and sniffing the air. You hit the sand and don't even want to get up, you could just sit there with your dog for hours, maybe take a nap yourself too. He's comfortable and wouldn't mind.