I wiped away the weeds & foam. / I fetched my sea-born treasures home... Ralph Waldo Emerson







Monday, February 9, 2015

Mo the Pug Goes to the Beach

Hello, everyone! Guess what! Yes, we are having another winter weather ''event''. It's gloomy and icy. No surprises, it's February, after all.



Mo tries hard to be a good puppy [11 months old on the 20th!] but no matter what the weather he wants to get out and run. And run and run.

his dog show pose

This is what greeted us today when we went to check out the beach.



Glaciers! Drifts from last week's snowfall.



And a lot of flooding and ice. This is frozen salt water! Oh yeah, it's cold this year.


A few weeks ago, before the weather got so dismal, a friend came by to help me take Mo to the beach. Mo goes wacko when he hits the sand and he is small but very strong. I can't control him or run fast enough to exercises him properly. And after he escaped from his harness one day we wanted to be sure that if he did run off he'd know where ''home'' is.



Off we went to the beach. Mo and my friend ran ahead...yay! They were so happy, having so much fun! Mo had never seen the ocean close up before.



And THEN!--- wouldn't you know, the cops came!
So fast!
And it was the Bay Constable, how scary!
We don't usually see the BC on the beach, more often I wave to the county police, or the Public Safety police. Occasionally the DEC police, whose Jeep always draws a mean snicker, as we read that as The Decorating Police. What they give out tickets for tacky umbrellas and mismatched beach towels? [Dept. of Ecology and Conservation, I think in real life. They're the Plover Police.]

Meanwhile the Bay Constable came right away and stopped to chat. Uh oh. The officer was nice but he made us leave the beach. Dogs are forbidden on the beach but there's sort of an unspoken custom that in midwinter, when there's no people or rare birds , it's okay or at least tolerated.



(If you think it's mean that dogs are forbidden, just picture a going out on a beautiful day with your picnic and beach stuff and family and sitting in a mess of dog poop! Not to mention I've had a few close encounters with unleashed very large possibly scary dogs when I've been walking on the beach. I love dogs but I'm wary of  strange dogs. One was even a Great Dane! Best the dogs stay home, in a general way.)



Back home Mo keeps me company while I sew.



He is so smart! Look at this, he has brought his little old baby bed, that came with him from California, I keep it in the kitchen so he doesn't have sit on icy tiles. And he has carried into my work area, and set it in the only patch of winter sun. He sets it on a weewee pad for extra warmth.





As the sun moves, every so often, he tugs his little bed further east, back into the warmth.






This week my grocery had Dollar Days sales, and I got Mo a pack of kitty fish poles games, 2 for a dollar. [plastic pole with elastic cord, ball and feathers]
Pugs are oddly catlike---they like to sit on your shoulder, pull the elastic out of your ponytail, stare at you blankly when you call their name, stuff like that--- and Mo thought the kitty toys were awesome.







So...he destroyed them. But it gave him a lot of fun for a buck.




Hope you all are warm and cozy! How I envy those of you who have had a few warm days.

love

lizzy

gone to the beach