Eau du chien mouillé.

It's been rainy this week.

View from under the umbrella.

I'm not complaining, I'm really not. They have scorching temperatures out west and lots of places here in the northeast are getting flooded. Out in Laos they have "hundreds missing" following flash floods and a dam collapse. All I have are luxury problems. 

In fact, Sophomore Dog Nipper really seems to like the rain. On Tuesday and Wednesday mornings we got drenched during our routine morning exercise (either a walk or playing in the yard, depending on presence of garbage cans) and he had a blast. He could not have been wetter if he had been snorkeling in the Caribbean. He smiled at me like the world's happiest dog. Maybe he was at that moment. 

In the yard, though, he picked up a little passenger:

Yep, stuck his wet self into the tall grass on the verge and came out with a wet bee that did not look like the world's happiest bee.

I wanted to gently de-bee him with the umbrella, but that scared Nipper and he dodged and weaved. He would like very much to play with (i.e., destroy) the umbrella, but doesn't like it waved at him. After some minutes I managed to brush the bee off with a ring toy, and he and the bee parted ways with no further acrimony.

After that, my only problem is the wet dog. He would love very much to eat a towel, and goes into a kind of frenzy at drying-off time. Despite my best efforts, you can only get a dog so dry with a towel anyway. He was still soggy for hours. And you know, there's a reason Glade doesn't make a scent called Wet Dog.

Well, at least he had fun.

If it's too dry where you are, I hope you may get some of this life-giving rain. And if you're being flooded, may you get a chance to dry out. We all must live in the middle of extremes, even the dogs.