The fair and industrious Trudy is painting, again. One by one, the interior walls are falling to her brush.
“Can you deal with Guinness?” she asked me. “He barking right in my ear while I paint.”
So I called his name using the magic word “walk” and picked up his leash, and we headed out the door.
Dark clouds had been scudding across the sky all day. It had even drizzled a bit in the morning. Now it was overcast and windy.
When we came to the corner where one path lead to the school and the other turned down the road, we stood for a moment. Just then rain started falling again—not a drizzle, this, but a real rain with big drops that made smacking sounds as they hit the ground. We were getting wet.
Guinness shook.
I looked at the overhang by the elementary school and briefly considered taking refuge over there. But we took the other path instead, because we had not been that way for a long time. We walked the long way around the block as the rain came down and the street gutters filled with fast flowing water.
We were soaked when we got home, but we both had smiles on our faces—he for the walk and I for the rain.
Frankly, that rain wasn’t even close to being enough. I know that if I were to go outside and stir the leaves at the base of the trees, the dirt would be bone dry. We need weeks and weeks of rain like that.
But I’m not complaining. And neither did Guinness.