There’s no getting past it. It is officially summer in Central Texas. It almost always gets here well ahead of the “calendar” start of summer, on the solstice. Some years it starts in March. I kid you not.
The temperature has been 95 degrees or higher (that’s Farenheit) for over a week, and at night it only gets down into the mid 70′s. That qualifies as summer. I don’t mind as much as I used to. Before I lived in Kentucky for 14 years, I thought I wanted nothing more than to live someplace cooler. Of course, Central Kentucky gets as hot as Central Texas, just not for as long. I discovered living there that it’s just as uncomfortable to deal with bone-chilling cold for nine out of twelve months as it is to put up with scorching heat for that much of the year.
At least the dogs like it. Basenjis are heat-seeking missiles. Four of mine learned to listen for the furnace to turn on every winter in the mobile homes we’ve lived in, and then curl up on top of the floor vent to soak up all the hot air. My first female, at age fifteen, sat too close to a space heater and scorched some of the fur off her back. Fortunately, I saw her butt smoking and made her move before she got burned down to the skin. She had a thick undercoat of a much lighter color than her outer coat, and had a “brand” of alternating black and gray bars on one hip for several weeks.
So the boys are happy out in their sweltering yard. They do nothing but lay in the shade and sleep all afternoon. I make big ice cubes by freezing water in large yogurt containers to put in their water bucket every afternoon. I doubt if it keeps their water cool for very long, but at least I feel like I’m doing something they like. I know I would like someone to bring me ice cubes — or popsicles in my case. But I have opposable thumbs, and I can get them out of the freezer for myself.
I have normally spent a lot of time in summers past putting up a tarp across part of the dog yard to provide shade. It’s a pain in the ass. If I leave the tarp in place for very long, the winds eventually rip it to shreds, and I have to go buy a new one. Or I can put it up and take it down every day, or every time the wind gets too strong. Problem with that was that if it was real windy, but also sunny and hot, taking the tarp down meant no shade for the dogs, so I’d have to bring them in the house. And every ten minutes they’d be bugging me to take them out…until they got outside and discovered that “hey! it’s hot out here!” and the dry grass would poke their feet and they’d want to turn around and come back in.
Now they have this nice plywood shade roof/Puppy sundeck that doesn’t flap in the wind. I made another shade awning for them using plastic garden fencing and shade cloth. I wanted more of the yard to get some shade in the late afternoon, because there are no trees anywhere near the west side of their enclosure. The wind mostly goes through it, and rain will too (if it ever rains again), so I don’t have to take it down until winter. Yay. It’s the little things, you know?
