April: Sun, Mud and Teeny Tiny Flowers

My front lawn is covered in little blue flowers and a single wild violet. They weren't there last year but they are now. Covid blues.

It was one of those weekends, prefect warm sunny weather. It always strikes me as odd when we have summery warm weather but the trees are still bare of leaves. An April phenomenon.

Since they moved the date to change over from Standard to Daylight Savings time, March is kind of like that too; it seems odd to have sunlight in the evening when there is still snow on the ground.

On Saturday I thought I'd take Hapi out onto the dykes, I called a friend to see if she wanted to come too with her dog. As it worked out she wasn't available until the evening so I ended up going twice, in the morning and the evening.

On the morning walk we ran into one of the Reservoir dogs and his owners. Owen is a Newfoundland/Bernese Mountain Dog a little younger than Hapi but much bigger and in a more critical state of health. I recognized him from a distance, his 'Mom' always wears a red winter coat and he's a huge black dog: hard to miss. Owen saw us and plainly was very excited. He started lumbering towards us and then became so overwhelmed by excitement that he started howling. It was amusing and endearing.

It seems that everyone wanted to go out on the dykes this weekend, lots of people trying to maintain a safe physical distance. Since there is a fairly wide path on top of the dyke and a parallel road along the land-side of the dyke, it is not that hard to do but it does mean you have to be constantly on the watch for people approaching you and which side of the trail or roadway they are walking on.

Of course, all bets are off with the dogs, even on leash they hunger for contact with their fellows and have no understanding of social distancing. Owen and Hapi had a brief reunion and then acted as if they didn't know each other at all, a fairly common doggy behaviour.

Later I met my friend and her dog in a parking lot near the dyke and we set out. I thought it was going to be a fairly brief walk but we ended out being out there for a long time, following a circuit that we knew existed but hadn't been on before.

Hapi found not one but two mud holes to wallow in. When she emerged from the first one she had changed her colouring, instead of a white-ish underbelly she now was completely black from her midline down. The second mud hole at first looked promising as a clear water pond that she could clean up in, but instead she got stuck in the mud under the water and I had to go down and drag her out. Oh boy.

When we got home she was really stinky, muddy and wet, and she went to bed in the basement right after her supper because she was so tired from the long walk. In the morning her bedding was as stinky, muddy and wet as she was the night before. Laundry time.

Usually I would get her groomed in late March/early April but since that didn't happen her fur is thick and too matted to brush out now. So I spent an hour cutting the muddy matted fur out, chasing her around the back yard with my scissors. The job was exhausting, I quit after an hour not because we were done but because I physically couldn't do any more. It doesn't look too bad, but there are enough missed tufts of fur sticking out that I will probably tackle it again when the weather gets better.

She looks less shaggy but she's still stinky.