Smile!

***There's my little buddy swimming in Lake Tahoe! 1997***

What better way to close another day by writing about the little black dog who made so many of my days. I used to mentally refer to Bernie as the "million-smile" dog, for she made me smile so many times each day that it had to add up to one million! Actually, one of my favorite things was to watch people's faces as Bernie came into their vision. Invariably, they would smile. Fellow walkers, drivers, people working in their yards--all would smile as the California mountain dog presented herself.

One day, when we were walking the mountain trails of Tahoe, I heard a gasp from a woman around the bend, where Bernie was and I was heading. This was out of my sight, so I feard the worse, that Bernie had taken a hunk o' love out of the walker. So I hurried to the scene to find Bernie prancing down the trail, two women standing, one with her hand on her chest--presumably she was the gasper. She looked at me and said, "Your dog came around the corner . . . she looks just like a bear!" I was like, "Yeah, sorry."

People referred to Bernie as bear-looking quite often. I always thought of her as more wolf-like in appearance. As I of late sift through photos of her recent and earlier, I notice a change. She looks much more wolf-like in her younger pictures, much more bear-like in her later ones. Likely the change was more a result of her massive coat she'd grow each winter upon moving to Minnesota than any other reason. Tahoe has snow and cold, but Minnesota has COLD. Put it this way: the extreme amount of snow in Tahoe (160 inches per year at lake level, if I remember right) equates to the extreme cold of Minnesota, whereas the more normal snowfall of Minnesota equates to the more normal cold of Tahoe. Of course, Sacramento has neither. Anyway, she'd grow these big huge coats of fur here, to the point you really couldn't feel her skin unless you poked a finger through the fur. Fortunately, Bernie didn't really shed. I'd have to brush it out starting in spring and honestly, we'd pull the last remnants of her winter undercoat out in August. For all those months, I'd brush out numerous clumps of beautiful black fur each week till it was "All done!" And upon hearing those words, Bernie would jump to her feet and eagerly await my "Bernie wanna green bone?" (Greenie) exclamation for being a "Good girl, Bernie!" 

And as she lept to retrieve the green bone from my hand, one of my million smiles would cross my face.