Hobe Sound-No Muffler Necessary 
(part 1)

The dog is going to bed earlier and earlier every night. She wakes up earlier and earlier every morning. Which makes me think her concept of time is duration based not astronomically associated. For the longest time she would go into the bedroom at around eight o’clock and wake me up at about a quarter to seven in the morning. Now she disappears from the Florida room about six thirty or seven. She sleeps in her bed, not moving all night but she now sticks her cold, wet nose up to sniff my sleeping body about six or six thirty. This morning it was only five thirty. I have, consequently, been getting up earlier and earlier myself. I do not mind. I like the morning much better than the hot afternoons and even a little better than the evenings.

When she wakes me up we have a routine. Everything about a dog is routine. They love routine.

First thing she does is shake herself. From slumber she wakes her body with a gyration that humans could not duplicate or tolerate. It is so fast that it is a blur. Her whole body spins from her ears to her tail. Her ears flap against her head. Her dog tags and collar (if I forget to take them off the night before) rattle like bells. I lie in bed listening to it and imagine every muscle, every nerve, every corpuscle shaken into awakeness! Then she comes over to the side of the bed and carefully puts her front paws on the side of the bed and pushes her nose up over the edge like a soldier in the trenches searching for a sniper out on the field of battle. If I show any signs of my own “awakeness” she will only go back to bed if I command her to do so. An eye open or a hand that moves is a signal that I am awake. Lacking that stern command, the day has begun!

I leave my clothes on the back of the dining room chair at night. I don’t have to collect them in the dark when I sneak out of the room in the morning. The dog responds to my hand signal and makes for the bedroom door like a child going out to play, bounding and skidding on the terrazzo floor. I pad out barefoot trying not to wake Elisabeth and I quietly click the bedroom door closed. The dog and I go through the Florida room and out to the back yard. I am still naked, clothes tucked under my arm. I pee in the flower bed or out on the lawn, head craned back to look at the stars or the clouds. The fence and bushes around the property protect me from being seen. I love the feeling of the round stones or the sand under my feet. The dog sniffs around the yard and relieves herself as well but she waits to shit until we go for her walk. Sometimes she can’t hold it but she tries. Some days I leave her out there while I go inside to prepare her breakfast, make coffee, get dressed, grab her collar, leash and plastic “poop-bag” and then go back out for our walk. Some days we wait for the meal and the coffee and just get out for our walk.

She goes nuts when she sees the leash and runs over and sits next to me fidgeting while I put her collar on her. I try to leave the leash off for a while so she can run and get some of the energy out of her but I have to balance the need for exercise with the need for safety. She is very bad about cars and being in the road and such. I give her the freedom I can.

Some mornings she has more patience and lets me make coffee and she eats her breakfast before the walk. I don’t know how I know that is ok but she lets me know by how she acts while we’re outside peeing. When I do make the coffee first I take the cup and sip as we walk. I don’t know how I know that making coffee first is a good thing to do but I do and it makes the walk more leisurely. I put her on the leash and stop most of the places she wants to sniff and inspect. She marks her territory regularly with a few drops of pee. Sometimes she “squats” like a girl-dog to do this but mostly she lifts her leg like a male. I guess that “marking” is supposed to tell other dogs she has been there, or this is her turf, or maybe it is so she can find her way back if she is lost. I can only conjecture.

We have some compulsory visiting spots. One is the coconut pile. This is, you guessed it, a pile of discarded coconuts. Coconuts are garbage in Florida. If you have coconut trees they fall on your lawn in great quantities. Most people will not trouble themselves to try to open them and eat them. I do. I am very good at opening them up! I can husk a coconut in a few minutes. It requires chopping and pulling the fibrous outer shell off of the nut first. If you want to drink the “milk” you have to carefully puncture the shell and drain it into a glass but most people don’t care for the milk. I do. Next you have to crack the shell of the nut and pry the chewy, white flesh out of the nut. That takes a few more minutes. And then I have a pile of chewy, moist coconut to munch on. Looking up into the huge mango trees along our walk I see that there will be a bountiful crop in a couple of months. The fruit is packed in the high branches of the trees. I hope there will be piles of mangos when they ripen, to go along with the free coconuts.

Another stop on our walk is the huge display of bougainvillea a block away from the house right on Eagle Dr. The corner house facing the Martin County water plant is overgrown with palms, peppers, and monster, scruffy bougainvillea. Deep inside the growth of the flowering plants is a tall palm struggling to stay alive and get a little bit of sun. The bougainvillea’s have all but covered it over. The brilliant flowers have been in display since we arrived in the late fall and show no sign of abating. Red, violet and yellow blooms, in clusters, spread out over bushes grown fifty feet wide and thirty feet high. I stop there on the way back home, the dog straining at her leash to get to her breakfast (if she hasn’t already eaten)I cut a sprig of one color or the other to take home to Elisabeth. She keeps a small vase on the white tile window sill just for these flowers. The kitchen-monochromatic as it is-craves a splash of color.

Between the coconut, the flowers and the leash (and perhaps an empty coffee cup) I have a lot to juggle on the last block of our walk back home. I kneel down on the sidewalk on the corner of Janice Drive and un-clip the dog. I don’t have to tell her to “go home”, she automatically sprints down the street and dives down the property line to the back door of the house. She waits there to get her breakfast (if she has not already eaten) or get inside to say “good morning” to Elisabeth, who is usually up by now, having her coffee and checking her e-mail.