huh?

I walked the walk for 2.5 hours today, with Inti. We did the loop up here in the neighborhood, just to check out what's going on, to pass the lovely garden with the cute sign that reads

over one million deer served

and then to scope out what's blooming and in what light. I keep forgetting to bring my compass, though, so I'm not learning all that much, except that I most definitely want to plant that wild lilac. After the loop, instead of coming home, we plodded on down to the beach. I've learned that my hiking boots work much better for me on the steep downhill terrain than my walking shoes - mostly in protecting my toes from becoming squished into the end of the shoe. Anyway, once on the beach we enjoyed low tide mostly to ourselves, until we met up with a young couple and their bull dog, Fat Boy Cooper.

Yep. That's his name. Fat Boy Cooper. He was a gorgeous and typy red brindle and white with chunky, stocky legs, a neck as thick as a tree trunk and a choking snort that would wake the dead. And he liked to swim. Swim. The owner had hip waders that she pulled on, and then she walked out into the bay. She had a few pockets full of rocks. Fat Boy doesn't like balls - he would rather chase rocks. I'm impressed by all this, of course. This was a huge, 5-year-old bull dog, jumping around like a Jack Russell Terrier, and swimming. Swimming!

Okay, the truth will out. He wasn't actually swimming. He was barreling along in the water, which was up to his shoulders, running with his back feet and dog paddling with the front. Fat Boy was cruising, at a speed that I think would rival my sister's hunting lab's powerful strokes. Fat Boy was sixty pounds of exuberant horsepower stuffed in a thirty pound hide.

And here's the kicker. He doesn't like to be in water over his head, because he sinks. However, he will actually swim in deep water all day if he's wearing his custom-made life vest. This I will have to see, sometime later this summer. I wonder if he wears goggles and fins?