OK, Toto didn’t wear the slippers, Dorothy did. And she wore them in Oz, by way of Kansas, not by way of South Dakota. And Toto was tan, not white, and a boy, not a girl, as in Phoebe the Westie. And Dorothy was a young girl, not a less-than-young woman… But aside from all this, it’s a perfect analogy.
In South Dakota there are bunches of these stickers that grow in the grasses. And they are killer stickers, I will say. They even hurt to try to touch to pull out. And they are definitely worse here on the res…which is basically country. No manicured lawns, no sidewalks. So not only does Phoebe not appreciate the rough streets we walk on, but she definitely doesn’t like the stickers…nor do I for that matter. She tries sometimes to get them out and ends up with them embedded in her mustache…
After nearly six months of this, the light bulb finally went off – why not get her some boots? She used to wear them in Madison, WI, to ward off the sub-zero temperatures and the salt they use to melt the snow – a real paw irritant. But they were little balloon like boots that she hardly felt…
I got on-line and started a search. Whatdya know – I guess a lot of hunting dogs actually wear boots too! So here’s Phoebe in her little red, and silver, boots:
She was pretty hysterical at first, trying to hold all four feet off the ground at once. But she seems to like them now and is no longer afraid to go in the grass when we walk to the post office, or to go on our regular walks. Problem solved!
The winds are starting to return now that it’s cooling off again. And on the rare occasions the winds blew in the summer, they were of no help. It’s like blowing the heat from a fire at you when it’s 100 degrees out. Can hardly wait for these winds to be blowing in the dead of winter…
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