Story 47: Mud Lounger

As noted yesterday, Laika used to love to go to the park in the truck. It was pretty much the highlight of her day to be able run with a bunch of other crazy dogs. On dry days, the pack of pups would sometimes be hard to watch through the cloud of dust produced by their stampeding. I was glad that I had the truck, because Laika would leave exhausted and completely filthy.

Most trips to the park would require a full wipe-down for Laika when we returned home. She regularly had a dusting of dirt from nose to tail, including inside her ears and sometimes on her tongue as well! On special occasions, though, Laika required an immediate bath to try to clean her up before allowing her to roam the house. If I failed to do so, there would be a trail of filth left on the carpet, the walls and sometimes even the ceiling!

We never really went to the park when it rained, because Laika didn't like getting wet...or so I thought. Plus, on rainy days, there weren't too many dogs there, if any, so driving the 15 minutes to get there wasn't worth it. Typical Pittsburgh weather usually includes rain, so most of the year is a bit damp and at points the ground can get pretty saturated. As a result, the dog park was never the most arid environment, with mud puddles most of the year.

Laika, who hated walking in the rain, was somehow magnetically attracted to mud. She may have actually been part pig, given her happiness to lounge in it. On days that the entire ground was wet, the park became a giant field of mud as the constant running of the hounds trampled most of the grass. All dogs would be filthy on those days. However, most of the time the giant park would have just a few smaller mud puddles dotting it. Without fail, Laika would find them and enjoy a bath by herself, rolling happily until she was completely covered...without a bit of her beautiful brindle coat exposed. It was as if she wanted to give herself a private spa treatment!

After running with the pack, Laika would sometimes steal a tennis ball and disappear on her own. If I would would blink, these opportunities would lead to only one place: a mud puddle. Not many other dogs enjoyed this behavior, which was good as most of the residual puddles were only built for one! I recall one time that my old neighbors took Laika to the park with their dog Rogue and I went to meet them after work. It was a dry day, so I was ready with towels to do the dust-down after the park. But...as I approached the park I saw a single dog, away from the pack and completely covered in muck. Yep, Laika was wallowing in the only mud puddle in the park by herself, completely happy and completely filthy. Upon seeing me, she was so excited that her regular wiggle produced a large cloud of mud as she ran toward me. I am pretty sure that I ended-up just as muddy as Miss Laika that day!

Luckily, this was a short-lived phase and in later years she tended to steer-clear of mud puddles. Granted, she enjoyed at least a mud-treatment per week most of the time during the Spring and Fall for the first few years I took care of her. Perhaps this was the reason that she maintained her youthful glow well into her sunset years!

An older, cleaner mud-pup lounges in her favorite place...the couch.