Dog Day...Evening?

Last night, as the air was clear and the sidewalks relatively traversable, the Notorious D.O.G. and I ventured forth to the dog park for a much-needed outing in the snow. Normally, the Regrade park (Seattle's smallest off-leash dog park, at 0.3 acres) is a little bit sketchy due to its proximity to the bus line and ultimate dive bar located across the street (the kind that you steer clear of, not the kind that yuppies like me deem to have "character" and make it their new favorite divey haunt until some entrepreneurial investor sees an opportunity for an upgrade, purchases it, revamps it, offers better food and a mixology menu and ultimately folds because all the yuppies who frequented the establishment in the first place have determined that the old character is lost with the new management and have moved on to their second favorite dive, where the process begins all over again). However, in the snow, the park seemed less like a suburban enclave for druggies and the homeless and more a wintry playground for canine companions.

Baylor loves the snow. Upon being released in the dog park he peed on everything (this has nothing to do with the snow, of course) and then happily brought a tennis ball to me for a long game of fetch, which I tired of before he did (largely because I forgot my gloves, making searching for the ball in the snow a cold and unappealing process). Here, he took a break from our game to check out the other activity across the park:

Despite my freezing fingers and the fact that I was tromping on yellow snow with every step (much as I attempted to avoid it), I think I had as much fun as Baylor - more, perhaps, because I realized that sometimes my mangy little menace is just the medicine I need to snap me out of a funk. Watching him bound through the snow in his red fleece jacket brought the biggest smile to my face, and put me in a much better frame of mind for the rest of the week. At the end of the day, I know he's just a dog...but he has a way of bringing me back to the things that matter: love, selflessness and simple joys. Thanks, Baylor, for a dog day evening - it was a good one.