Our family lives in the desert. You're probably already imagining sand as far as the eye can see, or red buttes and rocks, or maybe cactus after cactus after cactus. Well, that's not exactly what it's like here. We live in a beautiful oasis where three rivers come together and close to 250,000 people live. We enjoy 300 days of sunshine each year; a far cry from the 70 or so we had when we lived in the greater Seattle area. One of the necessities of living in the desert is artificial rain for the lawn, flower beds, and garden. Yes, you guessed it, irrigation and sprinklers.
Right now you're asking, "What has this got to do with Labs? I'm about to stop reading and move on." Please don't. Something funny happened today that I have to share.
As I said in my previous blog, we currently have Jasmine, a Black Labradoodle, and Tucker, a Black Lab. Jasmine is hard to ruffle. I think part of it is her age, 10 years old, and part of it is she is used to our family. Tucker is only 18 months old and skittish as a sparrow. He's only been with us for a week but he has truly stolen our hearts. It's really quite funny watching him figure out life with our family.
Today I was placing our irrigation system back in service after the winter. After turning the supply valve on at the street, I enabled each of the sprinkler zones one at a time for 2 minutes each. It takes a minute or so of air coming out of the lines and they hiss and spit water until the lines are full and they pop up out of the ground completely and start working. Tucker has not seen this before.
I was testing the second zone when I noticed Tucker in the flower bed. His ears were perked in full alert fashion and he was bouncing around a spot in the flower bed without taking his gaze off of this one little spot. I knew what was about to happen. I wish I had had time to get my phone out to record this. The moment the air was out of the line the sprinkler head below a couple of dried leaves popped up spraying water. Tucker took off like a shot. I don't think I've seen a dog run this fast ever. He ran across the back yard to get as far away as he could, barking the whole time to alert the world. Then the best thing happened.
Yes, you guessed it, he stopped right next to a sprinkler head for the next zone. and within about 15 seconds, it was hissing air and then popped up spraying water and Tucker was off again. I don't know what was going through his head, but I was laughing so hard just watching him. The best part is he was having a ball. His tail was wagging to beat the band.
Meanwhile, Jasmine, the older, wiser,tougher to impress Black Labradoodle stood on the back deck watching all of this and just laid down. I didn't see, but she probably yawned.
You've got to love Labs!
No comments:
Post a Comment