The funny thing about Chicago is that you go for months without seeing much of your neighbors, and then the weather breaks, and then each walk can be a social occasion. Although I don’t consider this a real break in the weather-I doubt it broke 50 today despite the most gorgeous sunshine-I correctly guessed that if I went for a walk with Ruby, we’d get some social time, see some folks we haven’t seen in a long time.

First, we ran into our neighbor with her two smallish, fluffish dogs: Lou and Greta. Greta loves Ruby. Loves. She’s not quite a year yet, so she’s still pretty excitable. She ricochets. I don’t remember whether her human and I could actually hold a conversation amid the dog chaos. But that’s ok.

Walking Ruby isn’t actually exercise. Her preference is to carefully smell her way down the block, which means I look like I’m loitering. I figure, it’s her walk. Her sense of smell is something like 200 times mine, so, if she wants to smell every blade of grass between here and Wrigley Field, I should indulge her when time permits.

So we loiter down the street, and meet another dog whose owner is clearly not amused with this weather. Girlfriend was wearing a down jacket (North Face, I think) and a winter hat. She didn’t appear particularly friendly, and neither was her dog: as we passed them, her dog strained at the leash, attempting to lunge at us, barking furiously. Alrighty then.

Next, we rendez-vous’ed with Frankie, the French bulldog. I happen to love French bulldogs. If I were the kind of person who paid for dogs, I’d probably have a collection of the darned things. I love their short, stocky stature, like lots of dog crammed into a little dog package. And those ears, those big bat ears seemingly out of proportion to their relatively diminutive features. Also, meeting French bulldogs gives me a chance to practice my very rudimentary French. (French bulldogs respond to my French the same way my German Shepherd responds to my German, which is to say, not so much.)

We headed back towards home up the other side of the street-I figure she’s already smelled everything on the west side of the street, so let’s have a go at the east side. I was hoping Greta the weimereiner would be out in her yard, but she was on a walk with one of her dads. I chatted briefly with her other dad. Greta’s not quite a year; they used to have Grommet, also a weimereiner, but he passed on to the great dog park after a nice long life.

Onward. Ruby smells, I loiter. Up around the corner, I thought I saw another neighbor who I hadn’t seen in a while, but it wasn’t her. It was a dog we haven’t seen in a while: Emma, the wheaten terrier. We’ve been running into her ever since she was a tiny, tiny puppy. Now she’s the cutest eight months ever, and chock full of puppy energy, which seems to confuse Ruby. You know how older dogs are; they play sometimes, but nothing too crazy.

Back up the other side of the street, past the house on the corner with the two bulldogs. Most often when I pass, a bulldog is sitting in a chair on the front porch, like his person. Tonight, he sat quietly in front of the front door, looking out onto his domain. He watches us with mostly indifference as we pass. I rarely see them out and about, and in the over two years I’ve lived here, I’ve only had occasion to pet them once.

We did pass a pair of white poodle-ish dogs, the smaller of the two growled menacingly at us, but Ruby ignored them, evidently smelling something wondrous. Sometimes, she pushes her nose into the grass and inhales deeply. What she smells must provide her the lay of the land, the landscape, the way our eyesight does. Her eyesight isn’t good. She frequently mistakes garbage bags or miscellaneous litter for a squirrel or something else worth stalking. If there’s another dog at the back of the yard at my parent’s house, she’s been known to stalk it until she gets close enough to realize that it is merely the basset hound. (A side note, I suggested to my mother that if my sister leaves her basset with them when she moves out, we should rename him Alfonso. His given name is Kirby Quentin, but I don’t think it matters what we call him because he doesn’t respond to anything.)