Some random thoughts and my new dog.

It was almost eleven at night and Kitty looked out the window and said, "Oh my God, the city is gone!" Sure enough, our building was surrounded by the thickest fog I've ever seen and the entire skyline of New York was gone from sight. It was so dense that you could barely see the next building over. Since I'm not sure who is responsible for this disappearing act, I'd like to salute both God and David Copperfield. This morning, the fog was gone and it is clear and bright and you can see all the way to Jersey.

While we were in Boston last weekend, Kitty and I got a dog named Rex. She's a brown boxer with a small black patch on her chest. Very cute pooch. Of course, I'm the idiot who named a girl Rex. Right now she can sit and stay, but that's about it. Obience school is a little to pricey, so it looks like it is up to me. Kitty rolls her eyes as I tell it to sit, roll over, play dead. She doesn't seem to understand that it takes time to teach a dog to do tricks. She's probably rolling her eyes because she has never seen anyone yelling into a Nintendo system. Sorry to disappoint, I have invested in a copy of Nintendogs, a charming dog simulator. (www.nintendogs.com) The extent of my dog walking is tapping on the touch-screen of the game and curbing my dog is remarkably easy.

This is a remarkbly subtle segue into another observation about New York City, not a mea culpa to my love of video games. The fact is, there are about a billion dogs in New York City. On a beautiful morning like this (aha! This all ties together-- sort of), if you take a walk to the open fields of Prospect Park in Brooklyn or Central Park in Manhattan, you will see the Puppy Coffee Klatch. People young and old get their dogs out of their cramped apartments, drink coffee and let the dogs run around and play with each other. Kitty and I have seen this first hand during our warm-weather runs. The surprising thing is that most of these dogs are big. I don't know how one could live in a City-sized apartment and enjoy oneself with an uncommunicative roommate the size of a shetland pony walking around and bumping into the coffee table. Also, where is the SPCSA during all this? They don't mind throwing paint on people wearing fur, but they'll allow a St. Bernard to live in a studio apartment with a family of four. Which is worse? Seems to me the St. Bernard has got ongoing psychological abuse. The mink only died once, right? I kid- of course.