If there is any beauty in an 8 a.m. flight, it is that it arrives in Denver at 10:30.
When I got to the vet to pick up Blake from camp, I met a dog that might be cuter than my friend's basset/dalmatian cross. I thought it was a puppy because of the texture of his fur, but, his humans say, they crop his fur--sensibly, in Denver's heat--and everyone thinks at first glance that this 13-year-old dog is a puppy partly because of the soft undercoat and partly because of his build. Closer up, his incipient cataracts also gave him away. He was a basset/newfie cross--I hope fathered by an overambitious hound--and the cuteness could not be measured on an ordinary scale. Howie, my friend's dog, has the long basset ears, which might trump the downy fur, but I would have to have both dogs for prolonged and careful scientific comparison in order to decide.
I love basset crosses. Basset plus Rottweiler, or blue heeler, or labrador, or dalmatian. Is it the clodhopper paws in clumsy but constant first position? The ridiculous build alone is enough to trigger my cooing adoration; the hoofs make it inevitable.
Wednesday night I spent petting my dog-in-law, a sweet-tempered if untrained boxer. A boxer's coat is soft, but never fluffy, all over, instead of just the top-of-the-labrador-snout. Kissing her wrinkled face and caressing her ears was, additionally, excellent camouflage when I was cornered by my least favorite in-law. Petting a dog lowers your blood pressure when you're cornered and gives you something else to think about other than flight or tart retorts and almost excuses your refusal to make eye contact.
Anyway, petting Rollie the basset/newf occupied me until I heard Blake shriek as he left camp. I thanked the human for his time and scurried to the desk: I love dogs but I need my buddy, and my buddy was shrieking fit to split your eardrums and heart. Had he bonded to other birds again? Did he fear having another pedicure? But as soon as he saw me he stopped shrieking and started chucking and chattering, and he talked to me all the way home. My puppy-bird.