No sand dollars — just a million extremely excited dogs enjoying the gorgeous, sunny day we had yesterday (a little chilly, but otherwise perfect). Because dogs aren’t allowed to be on the beach during the summer months, this is a good time of year for people to bring them to the water. I’m pretty sure we were the only two people there who weren’t accompanied by at least one fluffy monster. Quite a few folks had at least two or three romping about or getting their leashes tangled. Oddly, or perhaps not so, several of them seemed to have rather human names. It was a while before we realised the lady plaintively calling for “Nigel!” was not, in fact, summoning her child, but a tiny, rather grubby poodle. The owner of a colossal and very good natured jet-black Newfoundland could be heard saying to her sweetly lumbering charge, “Come here, baby. See what mommy has for you.” Dogs of every size and shape were flying over the sands, investigating each other’s butts, splashing into the (I’m sure quite frigid) waves to retrieve tennis balls, and altogether having a decidedly fantastic time.

Ross doesn’t really appreciate charms of a canine nature, but for me it just felt really good to be surrounded by so much positive energy and joy in life. Besides their sometimes absurd (and therefore endearing) physical appearances, the thing I like most about dogs is their overall existential enthusiasm, their unstoppable curiosity and appreciation for the stuff of the world about them. It’s an attitude I work at daily, and dogs are as good a role model as any.

In the evening, we went out and got a pizza stone so we could make pizza from scratch for the very first time. We topped the dough (churned in our bread machine) with homemade tomato sauce and liberal handfuls of salty prosciutto, oily black olives, fresh mozzarella and crumbles of goat cheese. It was, as you can quite clearly see, a pizza fit for the gods.

We ate it with the rapture of dogs at the ocean.