The dog days of summer

Back in May, I bought a wading pool for our dog, Gracie. Since she’s a black lab mix, she tends to get really hot when we walk her in the summer heat, and I thought if she had a pool to lie in after our walks, she could cool down faster.

So I watched the sale flyers, and as soon as I saw a hard plastic wading pool advertised, I went to the store to get one.

“I need a pool for our dog,” I explained to the saleswoman as I studied the 4’ and 6’ diameter pools. “She’s too big to stretch out in the smaller one here, so I’ll take the larger one.” Realizing that it would not fit into the trunk of my Camry, I asked her if someone could help me secure it to my car roof for the ride home. She assured me I could get help.

She was wrong. The store prohibited employees from helping customers strap things to their car roofs because of liability issues. She did offer me all the twine I wanted, however.

I looked at the 6’ diameter pool laying on the parking lot asphalt next to my car. The pool was bigger than the car’s roof.

“I can do this,” I told myself, heaving the pool on top of my car and beginning to thread the twine over the pool and through my car windows. By the time I was done, it looked like a monster spider had spun a web over my car.

No problem. The pool was secure.

Until my car speed reached 15 mph.

Then the pool bucked and shuddered on my roof and began to slide sideways. I hit my emergency blinkers, pulled off the road and tightened the twine. I took back roads home, drove under 10 mph, and kept my blinkers on.

“Gracie better appreciate this,” I muttered as I inched home. And then the twine broke and the pool flew off the car.

I looked at the pool lying in the road behind me. Thankfully, the road was empty and no oncoming car had been attacked by my dog’s wading pool. I pulled over again, turned off the car and walked back to retrieve the pool.

“I cannot believe I am doing this,” I said as I lifted the 6’ diameter pool off the road and returned to the car. I examined my twine, which was shredded into several pieces, and debated what to do.

I could abandon the pool on the side of the road in hopes some mom with a carload of hot and crabby toddlers would find it, thank her lucky stars, and take it home.

I could leave it and come back with heavy rope to secure it to the roof.

I could just forget the whole thing and abandon the pool. But then I would be throwing away the money I’d spent on it. (A whopping $12 plus tax. I could feel my frugal forebears’ disappointment.) Not to mention I’d be committing a crime of littering. How much of a fine do you get for throwing a pool on the side of the road?

I didn’t know and didn’t want to find out. I grabbed the pool and stuffed it into my trunk as far as it would go. The hard plastic gave a little, so I could finally fold it over. A third of it still hung outside my trunk, so I took the longest twine piece I could find and tied the trunk shut over the pool. I drove home slowly, all the while thinking that Gracie better LOVE this pool.

Guess what?

She doesn’t. She refuses to get into it. She’ll drink water out of it, but she won’t set foot in it. What am I going to do with a 6’ diameter wading pool?

Well…I’m 5’7”….it’s really hot this summer….

“Stop drinking out of my pool, Gracie!”