Tag: dog park

The past couple of days Ellie has only wanted to go on 45 minute walks, still amazing for her age, but not quite the adventurous 60 to 90 minute walks of previous days. One thing I’ve noticed as she’s aged, in addition to the stiff legs and shortness of breath, is that at an intersection she tries to take the diagonal across instead of crossing each street in turn. She I suppose intrinsically understands the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and at her age wants and needs to minimize effort, but it always makes me think of the famous theorem that bears Pythagoras’ name. It made a big impression on my young self when I first learned of it and I realized the world of mathematics, and our world it describes, is both profound and beautiful.

Despite this I make Ellie take the long way round, crossing each street one at a time instead of taking the diagonal, as we live in the world of the automobile and it is their rules that govern our walks. She doesn’t understand, but then neither do I.

We’re in the midst of a long heat wave where it isn’t cooling off much at night, but yesterday we had air conditioning installed so now we have a delightfully cool house. I may have overdone it though when I looked over and saw the pup covered in frost. Although I suppose the trees in the background are a dead giveaway that Ellie is actually outside, this is not from the big snow we had in January but a much smaller one in December. The wind was blowing the snow horizontally in little pellets so I didn’t make her pose long as the dog park is exposed at the top of the hill and the surrounding neighborhood was a more pleasant place to be. She was having a great time despite the expression, she was bored that I stopped our walk for pictures and waited patiently for the fun to resume.