Scenery? What scenery?

Sonny

Copyright 2006 Lydia Hinshaw

HAINES, AK -- The weather was perfect. The scenery was magnificent. Eagles flew overhead and a whale sounded below.
Many of the passengers on the Skagway-Haines fast ferry were enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime trip. And so most of them gathered on the upper deck to take pictures of -- a dog.
The dog in the mugshot above. His name is Sonny, he's a giant malamute who weighs 145 pounds, which is about what I weigh. He is six years old. He eats four to five cups of dog food per day, plus he's fond of bacon and bacon grease, which his human provides in generous quantities. He lives in Skagway, but was on his way to Haines with his "mom" to visit her family.
We learned this just from listening to all the questions people were asking. If this dog were mine, I'd print up handouts with his vital statistics and carry them with me, along with a sign that says "I am a deaf-mute," plus possibly a large, empty doggy dish for donations. But Sonny's mom answered everyone with patience and good cheer. Sonny posed for pictures with children and adults and loved every minute of it.
We never did learn the name of Sonny's mom, but she said to watch for her white pickup around Skagway. We will recognize it because Sonny will be in the back, and if it's parked, there will be folks taking Sonny's picture. I cannot imagine how we have been here in a town of 850 people for more than six weeks without encountering Sonny before. He is not a dog anyone could forget.
Our ferry voyage took us to Haines, where we met Rosa, a rotund cat with a recently shaved back. She met us at the door of a gift shop. In fact, she seemed to be running the place, as there were no humans in the store.
Rosa, whose name we did not yet know, followed us outside and thwarted our initial attempts to take her picture by sticking her face into the camera's lens. A passerby told us that Rosa actually lives in another gift shop around the corner, up the hill and across the street.
Naturally, we headed there to get the story on Rosa's haircut. Seems all the fur on her back had become matted, and so her human had shaved it off. This all makes sense. A cat normally keeps itself quite clean, which is possible because a normal cat has the flexibility of a yoga instructor. Not Rosa. Her weight problem was such that she could never have reached past her shoulder with her scrub-brush of a tongue.
As Prince Charming talked with Rosa's human, Rosa crossed the street in a manner that stopped hearts as well as traffic, lumbering out in front of an automobile that fortunately wasn't moving much faster than she was.
Chastised by her human for this dangerous behavior, Rosa hurried into the gift shop where she lives and collapsed, panting, on the carpet.
Yes, there was lots of great scenery today, and we enjoyed it once we stopped being distracted by oversized and adorable pets.


Rosa the rotund