full tilt Mauro

Mauro got us up before sunrise again. That’s not as bad as it could be, since sunrise was 8:44 am. Sunset was 2:50 pm. We have to take their word for it since we don’t really see the sun. We did manage to walk him before the weather went completely down the toilet again. There actually was a brief glimpse of the sun.

We took Mauro to the dog park Sunday. He is becoming a seasoned subway rider. He knows where we are going now, so he gets very anxious, and therefore difficult to hold. There were a couple of ladies with “squeaky toys” there but they gathered up their little darlings when they saw our lummox coming. He is incredibly fast and agile and very playful. However, at 95 pounds, it’s best to get the women and children off the street when he gets going. The little dogs can accidentally get hurt.

As soon as he is loose in the dog park, Mauro runs at full speed back and forth from one end to the other until his tongue is hanging out and he has to rest. We ended up with several other dogs there before we left - a Golden Retriever, a Rotweiller and a couple of others. Mauro was the biggest but also the youngest by far and the older dogs kept trying to put him in his place. The problem is that when Mauro gets wound up he wants to make friends with the other owners and jumps on them. On his hind legs, he is about 5 feet tall, and, understandably, that puts people off. He did manage to wear himself out and he almost volunteered to leave. He is still recovering and, given the fact that at the moment it is about Zero Celsius with a 40 mile an hour wind, he doesn’t really want to go out anyway.