The Thing about Being Short

Here are the bad things about being vertically challenged:

1. You have to shorten the hems on everything,

2. You can't see at parades,

3. You never know what's on top of the refrigerator,

4. You're always stuck in the front row of photographs, no matter how awful you look that day,

5. The top shelves in cabinets are terra incognito, and

6. Automobile shoulder straps hit you right across the neck.

However, it's better than being a short dog.

To wit, meet Ivy:


Ivy, who reminds me so much of the Flying Nun for some reason, lives down the road from me. She's been wowing the spectators at agility dog competitions.

That's a good thing, because Ivy lives next to a stream in which salmon spawn and die. That means bears are in the yard all summer. Now the bears are hibernating, but danger still lurks for little short dogs.

When an errand took me that way this afternoon, Ivy was playing in the yard with a frozen, deflated basketball. She also showed me her "stick," a little piece of firewood that would be a stick to any regular sized dog, but to Ivy it was a log.





In the nearby trees were three bald eagles, all eyeing Ivy as a potential snack. She knew it, too. When one flew overhead, Ivy ran and barked at it, no doubt remembering the time when she was a puppy and almost became a bald eagle snack.



This photo has absolutely nothing to do with Ivy, except that it's the termination of the salmon stream that runs through Ivy's yard. I also liked the mist rising off the water at the pond continues to freeze over. It was 3 degrees when I got up this morning.