When I phoned my friend Jane to see if Abby and I could join her and Sam for their after-work walk in town, she said,"I have a better idea. Why don't I pick you up and we go for a walk on the beach?"
I wasn't about to say no to that; I would have said yes if it had been snowing hard all day. For years, I haven't been able to walk with my dog at the beach because she is dog-aggressive and a failure at recall (when I call, she takes a messageand gets back to me later). Abby is a different dog and the beginning of a new kind of freedom for me. I might even make some friends now.
So this was my five-month-old puppy's first time ever at the beach. She and Sam had their usual good time chasing each other around but it only got better when we found a "lost" floater Kong with a rope on it bobbing by the shore. Abby is not afraid of the water at all so she tasted salty whenever I kissed her the rest of the evening.
While we were there, a woman charged down the sand towards the water, stripping off clothes as she went until she wading into the water wearing only a bathing suit. A friend took her picture then she ran back to shore, hooting. I know what she wanted: to be able to say she went swimming on March 22 when it was sunny and 25 degrees.
I said to my friend Jane that I should take a picture for the newspaper then realized I didn't have a pen and paper on which to record her name and the names of her friends.Oops. Too excited about going to the beach for the first time to remember the essentials. Jane has her Beach Survival Kit (towel, water, extra clothes) so I need mine: notebook, pens, camera, book, snacks, a bottle of wine.
What? It's how I do the beach. Actually, that's the survival kit I pack for anything. Yeah, you want to be stuck in a snowstorm on the Cobequid Pass with me.
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