Rescue Dog Goes on His First Vacation Adventure: To the Ocean
Guest Contributor
The following story was a finalist in the Tales of Summer Tails Photo and Story contest. The top three finishers received $500 in cash, as well as $2,000 in cash and supplies for their favorite shelter. To read more stories, click here!
Bishop is not a hot weather guy. Like his human mom, his best day is a breezy dry max of 75, perfection for long morning and shorter afternoon walks, with chasers of cushiony porch time.
PHOTO: PATRICIA CONWAYBishop remembers fondly his two summer trips to Maine with us. The first journey seven years ago may have been his first real trip anywhere. We don’t know what transpired in his Life Before Us, except for a lack of love and attention before he landed on our shores.
Despite the long car ride and the unfamiliar house and those utterly foreign sea smells, he adjusted immediately and discovered the adventures of hill walking and sand and the tastes of lobster rolls and fries - just the tiniest tastes.
PHOTO: PATRICIA CONWAYCovid and a few health issues have kept us homebodies for the past few years, a situation which the always accommodating Bishop finds perfectly acceptable. He walks in his jaunty, the-world-is-my-oyster gait down our main street to the village and Erie Canal towpath, where our brisk steps slow down for long serious sniffing of the lovely rose bushes along the towpath, communications central for all the dogs who walk there.
There’ll be a bowl of fresh filtered cold water or a snack when he returns from these exuberant excursions, then a nap on the screened porch which he believes to be his vacation home, always seeking out the chair in the best sunspot, as Yorkies do. Occasionally, Bishop will vary his summer routine by spending a day or an overnight with dogsitter Laura, enjoying lunch under the trees with his friends Jack and Crickette.
PHOTO: PATRICIA CONWAYSo there are no sporty summer images of Bishop in a tiny life jacket, wind-whipped and sea sprayed by the Atlantic, or leaping into a lake closer to home, but every summer day is a glorious adventure for him.
This story was submitted by Patricia Conway in support of Northeast Animal Shelter. To read other stories from the Tales of Summer Tails Photo and Story contest, click here!
