Saturday 20th June 2020 - Slowing Down and Longest Day x 3

Barney has never been a great one for walking in warm weather and now he’s 65 in human years, lesser so. (The old way of calculating a dogs age by multiplying it by 7 has been superceded, otherwise Barney's human years would be 77.) Gone are the days when he would walk with us over to Trunch, where we would stop for lunch before either walking back or taking the bus. We now tailor our walks to fit in with what Barney is capable of and as a result during the warmer months he tends to have his main walk in the cool of early morning. We could, of course, leave him at home and walk further, but somehow this does not seem right. Barney is not the only one who is slowing down. Poppy who loved to be out and about, returning home to eat or to snuggle down indoors when it was cold, is now spending most of her time either inside or in the garden. Recently, she has lost a lot of condition but she eats well and seems happy to be sedentary, lazing around and watching the world go by. The same age as Barney, in human years, she is certainly not ageing as well. As for Sid, he is in his human teens when communication is often reduced to grunts, groans and rolling of eyes but Sid is very tolerant of his ageing family….. that includes Peter and me!

We usually associate the longest day of the year as being the 21st June but looking at three different weather apps, this year there will be three longest days. The 20th, 21st and 22nd will all see the sun rise at 4.29 a.m. and set again at 9.24 p.m. I’ll leave you with this ‘amazing’ piece of information, plus four of the photos I took on our Wednesday morning walk with Barney.