For the last two days, it
has been raining non-stop. Not a
pleasant fall drizzle, with periodic pauses when the clouds thin out and you
can feel the sum behind them. This rain is
a steady downpour, cold, hard, and so dense that looking through it is like
looking through a curtain of water. This
is spiced up at times with some spectacular special effects – booming thunder,
crackling flashes of lightning, and even heavier wind driven downpours that are
like standing under a waterfall, with vision of about two centimeters.
This storm was promised to
us on the weekend. Because of that, a dog show that was scheduled for Saturday
and was to be held in a location out doors, was cancelled. So of course, on Saturday, there was sun and
a few clouds, an ideal day for a dog show.
The storm moved itself to
Tuesday. Tuesday was a busy day for me, a day that I had a lecture to give in
the early evening near Tel Aviv, and
then at 3 in the morning, I had to take Tutti, the pregnant Canaan girl, to the
airport for her flight to Italy
Well, I managed that, gave
my lecture, struggled to drive home, with the thought always in my mind that in
a few hours I would have to be driving through that again to take Tutti to the
airport.
At three in the morning,
when I came to take Tutti out of her warm bed to go down to the car, she looked
at me in confusion. “You can’t be serious! You really expect me to go out in
THAT!!!! I don’t want to go anywhere!”
Well, Tutti, the choice was not yours, and I did not really want to go
out either…A pile of warm blankets in her crate made it all more convincing,
and once again I struggled to see the road through the rain as I made my way to
the airport. Fortunately, at that time
of night, and in those conditions, there were almost no other cars on the road,
so at least all I had to worry about was the weather and not crazy drivers.
Tutti was settled in her
crate with her pile of warm blankets, ready to travel with the guy who was
accompanying her, while I again was out in the storm, on my last trip home for
the night – or morning, in fact. Again I
had the feeling that I was underwater as I slowly made my way home, accompanied
by thunder and lightning (my dogs are not at all afraid of thunder and
lightning, but I am!). At last, I was
home, just in time for the morning feeding and cleaning hours. The dogs didn’t care about the weather, they
wanted their food!
Soaked, but with my tasks
all finished, I was finally able to relax in the house for a while, grateful
that I didn’t have to go anywhere for the next few days. And this was really lucky – as I watched the
incessant curtain of rain from the window, I could see the rivers running down
the highway and the traffic slowed to a crawl.
Later, I heard on the news that from the quantity of heavy rain, some
holes had opened up in the highway (the main highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem
Two entire days of heavy
rainfall, with just about no breaks at all!
In some parts of the country (including my area), in two days we had
about half of the yearly average of rain….
The dogs, for the most part,
were not concerned. The collies don’t
care at all about rain, they look soggy and messy, but underneath they are dry,
and although they can go into their kennels and dog houses, most of the time
they are happy to run around in the rain, going in just when it is really a
downpour. The Canaans, on the other
hand, usually curl up in their boxes and sleep, ignoring what is going on
outside.
Except for Ben. Ben is a seven month old puppy, who is due to
go to his new home abroad in a few weeks.
He is an active and opinionated pup, and having been born at the end of
April, has never had any experience with real rain.
The rain itself did not
bother him, he ran around the yard ignoring it. What did attract his attention
was all the flotsam that was carried along as the water drained off the
cement. Ben decided that these were
things that had to be caught! I heard
him barking a strange sort of bark, and saw him running from one side of the
yard to the other, head down, and obviously hunting something. He also ran over to the top of an old
doghouse which I had left in the yard for the dogs to climb on, and kept
barking at it and nosing and pawing it as well.
I couldn’t see any reason for what he was doing, but since we do have
snakes in the hills here, although it is late in the season for them, that was
all I could imagine. I went out to check, turned over the dog house and
inspected the area and found – nothing!
It took some time before I realized, as I watched him continue this
behavior, that he was hunting leaves and things that were floating in the rain,
and the raindrops falling on the dog house made noises that he thought were
animals hiding inside.
None of the other dogs were
in the least interested in this imagination game…
Habibi, of course, spends
the minimum possible time outside when it is raining, and is quite capable, I
think, of not peeing for 24 hours if it means staying dry inside.
And then there is Emma and
Caldas…They hate rain, even a sunny day with the patio wet from morning washing
is not something they like stepping on.
And now, in their delicate condition…well, going out at all is not
something they want to do, and in the rain???? No chance!!!! Caldas, with a few days to go now until whelping,
and with a belly that makes it difficult for her to move at all, has taken up
position in her whelping box, curled up in the rug and newspapers, with the
intention of not moving from there until her puppies are born. Emma has the same attitude, but her hiding
place is under the covers in my bed – even when the bed is made. Yesterday when I called the dogs to go out,
there was no Emma. I looked all over for
her – no Emma! Until finally I noticed
that the bed cover was not completely flat…there was Emma, in her blanket cave.
Go out in the rain???? You can’t be serious!!!!!
This morning, thank
goodness, the sun came out….
 |
| Ben |
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