Spring Evening in the Fort

I am just back from an early evening walk with the little dog.

Our new little dog, Heywood Floyd -- not that new, I suppose; we've had him since July -- is, we have determined, part Jack Russell terrier, and very high energy.

Without at least one long walk a day, he is fraught with unexpended energy, and rushes through the house, rrrrring and flailing and finding toys for everyone to throw him.

So if I haven't managed to get him to the dog park during the day, come evening I take him for a long walk through our neighborhood.  I try to do it just at sunset because of how lovely our neighborhood looks against the setting sun, and then against the blue-lit sky just after the sun has set.

It's also usually nicely cold at that hour, but not today. I'm afraid spring may have arrived.  And you know what we've been told -- when spring is here, can summer be far behind?

I do hate summer.

But tonight was lovely, if unseasonably warm.  Only a few joggers (Heywood gets alarmed at people running: He thinks they are either attacking me, or possibly prey) and no other dogs.  A lovely wind.

The dog park would have been better.  We have an excellent dog park here in the Fort.  Heywood doesn't mind the dogs there, for some reason.  And we can take him off his leash and let him run wildly, which is what he needs -- 30 to 45 minutes of hard running every day.

The dog park also has a lake, so even in summer he won't get too hot.  We walk down there and he goes for a swim.

And the kid likes it, because of all the other dogs.  It's like a dog zoo.  If I wasn't working fifty hours a week (or sixty hours a week) we'd go there every day.

Maybe this summer.