On Sunday I decided to wash Biko, who hasn't had a decent bath since it became cold (so, before late November). It's so funny reading a dog's body language and trying to guess what he's thinking. Biko is afraid of water when it's spraying out of the hose, so whenever he's not on a leash and he sees me reach for the hose, he runs off to a safe distance and watches me with what I suspect is suspicion in his eyes. When I give him a bath, I alleviate the problem by tying his leash to the fencepost and tricking him into coming close enough for me to attach it to his collar, which is what I did on Sunday.
He looks at me confused. I climb over the fence and reach for the hose, turning it on.
He sits, shoulder's hunched, head slowly sinking while looking up at me. He knows what this means. I kind of love the moments when I know exactly what he's thinking. I felt a little bad for him, but clean dogs get longer belly rubs, and he looks so pretty when he's clean.The second moment was last Saturday, when I realized that a lizard that was hanging out in front of my door was in fact stuck via fresh paint. My landlord's son painted my porch in the morning while I was asleep. By the time I was leaving the house for the first time around noon, it was dry enough to walk on, but the lizard apparently didn't wait long enough and was effectively glued to the spot right in front of my door. I didn't want to use my fingers in case it got scared and bit me, so I grabbed a piece of the dead banana tree leaves that had blown into the courtyard and poked at each of the lizard's little feet until they were free. It still didn't move. I realized that it's little belly was stuck, too, and poked at that until the lizard finally slowly waddled off, surely in pain (it didn't lose any major body parts, but it was impossible to get it loose without taking off a couple of wee toes). I wonder how long it had been there...
