The Elephant in the Garden and Other Curiosities

Freddie and I have had some excellent walks recently — a combination of summery weather, summery spirits/activities all around, and some big improvements in Freddie's adolescent reactivity. He's not perfect, but maybe the two year mark will prove to be the turning point it's rumoured to be!

Here are some sights from walks over the past couple of days ... including the elephant(s) of the post title!

This reminds me of Provence.

The blank wall also gives me the urge to paint! Keep scrolling for some far more impressive graffiti than I could ever manage ...

Freddie has been big into digging lately. He buries his ball then shovels it out. It's great exercise ... worth the 20-minute hosing down that's needed to get the sand out!

(Freddie might not shed fur, but our home often feels more like a beach cabin than a condo.)

Stick with the sandbox, Freddie.

This is Lucy. She's ready to make her move.

A few seconds after I took this shot, Freddie and Lucy were wrestling, and the ball had disappeared.

I hope some big, powerful pooch with a good nose has managed to unearth it.

Phone Call

Panthers Softball

Another Smartphone shot. In the aftermath of my own phone acquisition, I've done a pretty good job of not wasting time on the thing. It hasn't been much of an effort; I tend to forget that I have it. Home internet use, however, is another story ... 

Ironically — perhaps predictably — this blog, which started out, in part, as something to replace time-wasting on the internet, has started to generate its own time-sucking mechanisms, in the form of "para-blogging" (i.e. publicizing posts all over Google + and FB, networking, etc.). 

I've made some great connections this way — Tony in Oregon, Heather in Wisconsin, Torill in Norway ... dog people, diabetic people, groovy people all over the world — but I fear I'm losing sight of the original purpose of Walking With Freddie (something quick-ish and Freddie-ish that I could do online and share with a small, interested audience), not to mention spending too much time clacking away on my laptop. 

Now, building up an audience that goes beyond my immediate circles does appeal to me. The desire to share written stuff with other people, with strangers even, is one of the reasons I keep throwing little fiction puppies into the lair of the crazy, dying book-publishing beast, and it's the main reason I've been sucked into the virtual vortex of the blogosphere (yeah, this sentence is a metaphorical disaster zone ;-)). But whether my blog posts get read by two hundred people or twenty people — or by Paul and Leah and my parents — shouldn't really matter. It doesn't matter. Having one friend is a million times better than having none. 

The pool has been filled!

So! With much gratitude to WWF readers everywhere, I'm going to cut back substantially on my publicity & networking efforts.

There are walks and runs and swims to go on, live conversations and games of fetch to be had, herb gardens to be tended ... and, yeah, essays to be marked.

Not without fortification, of course.

Sticky Wicket?

OK! Let's admire some beach graffiti!

Freddie was a very good boy on this low-tide beach walk, all the way from Kits Pool to Hastings Mill at the north end of Alma Street. No hyper reactions to people or dogs. Each time we encountered someone, he stopped and waited for me to let him know if it was OK to say hi. And his greetings were all polite. Just one bit of naughtiness — snitching Ollie's ball and playing keep-away in the tide pools. Oh, Freddie.

I don't know who paints this stuff on the bulwarks of Nofo's swanky waterfront properties, but it's pretty groovy. 

So is the natural handiwork ...

But now, what are we to make of this?

"What elephant?" says Freddie.

Thanks for stopping by! Freddie and I hope you'll leave comments and come back and all that jazz ... but if you, too, are cutting back on cyber-time, we'll of course understand.

Play bows to all ...