The peonies next door. ©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack and I got a late start today because of rain. I wasn’t really feeling all that energetic either, so we stuck close to home and walked around the neighbourhood. Jack likes to do that every few days so he can keep up with the P-mail. When we’re on a trail I don’t notice that Jack is slow, but in town on a leash Jack dawdles and dithers and takes forever to get all the way around.  It’s his nose. It takes him in all sorts of odd directions, even backwards. He inches along inhaling deeply, seldom looking up and stopping often for an in-depth nosing. Sometimes he licks this or that particular blade of grass and sometimes he lifts his head to sniff the air around him, usually with his mouth open like a cat. He carefully leaves his own news in rationed dribbles on important posts and seldom leaves more than a few drops in any one place, believing that brevity is the soul of wit.