2 Years With A Large Brown Dog

2 years ago we were putting the finishing touches of prep work to add a large, chocolate Breyer dog to the tirehouse. His kennel was ready; he was more than happy to climb in the car and completely blew off the recently bought and built kennel, walked right up to the front door and all but said, "let me in the air conditioned house". And, that is where he sleep today. He will pop into the kennel for a drink from the 5 gallon water bucket in there, but, sadly, the kennel is "time out" for him these days and he rules the house. He obviously had been inside and on the bed and furniture in his pre-abandoned life but learned pretty quickly that was not the case here. Our first walk, on leash mostly, had him acting like he'd been here before; when off leash he seemed to already know the trail patterns; it's been a 2 year treat having the big guy around. He's a little sad right now because his girlfriend seems to be unavailable for his morning visits; he's going to have to get used to that with school about to start back up in Louisa. Good thing his new dad is retired and he'll get to wander with me every day in forest that he's in charge of: the King of Quail.
I realize it's been two days since last I wrote about "today on Earth" but for Virginia it's been more of the same: muggy, not really warm but not cool (with an occasional breeze it was quite pleasant) with periods of rain. The 6+" forecast for here hasn't even come close to happening - barely an inch- but the DeeCee area has been hammered and flooded and the Tidewater area of Va. has also been in the 5+" storm scene and had considerable flooding. Today there is less rain chance as the system is being pushed farther north and eventually off shore by a front pushing through today but temps will rise to near 90. Tomorrow and Saturday are forecast to have lower rain chances before another system sets up and we get a repeat performance next week of soggy weather.
While we are soaked, and the moss is loving it on my trails, the western US is either cooking or on fire or both. Record temps and massive fires are causing major issues with Yosemite Nat. Park closed because of fires and smoke and Death Valley hitting 127 a couple of days ago and Portland and Seattle are cooking in the 90's. The climate change science has been talking about for 60+ years is happening now and it's not sudden, just steady and ever changing: bigger rain events, longer droughts, higher and higher temps; Global Warming. And, as usual, people are shocked, "I can't believe it flooded Norfolk like this" and that's just rain, wait till the next king spring tide when the flooding is from the ocean. (That won't be with the full moon tomorrow because the moon is at Apogee and farthest from Earth...)
The new, weekly volcano list has 22 mountains rumbling and belching and oozing with Indonesia leading the list with 5. Kilauea is still the one going big, fissure 8 still dumping new basalt into the Pacific and burning homes. The quake list mostly outlines plate boundaries, diverging, converging and transform boundaries all with quakes but none above magnitude 5.5 (S. Sandwich Isles along the always agitated Scotia Plate).
There may be more sky visible tonight with less storm chance but I did get a cool view 3 nights ago: 3 stars, 2 planets and the moon, that was all I could see through the haze. The stars Vega, Altair and Deneb made up the summer triangle and were almost straight overhead and the moon was joined by golden Saturn and very red Mars. That was it, the clouds blocked everything else; it was like being in a lit up city.
The anniversary dog is up and out and patiently waiting for his morning walk and I need to oblige; he's in charge!! Hope you get out and enjoy some summer sun and heat, today on Earth.
The first picture I took of the Breyer dog! What a handsome rascal!! He's a "little" bigger now; well fed!