Animal Insting

Yesterday Mom and I had a most excellent adventure!  We walked in the Brookside St. Patrick's Day Warm-Up Parade.  It was actually a pretty warm day, so I asked Mom why it was called a "warm-up" parade, and Mom said she thought maybe it was a "warm-up" for the real St. Patrick's Day parade, which will be on St. Patrick's Day.


Anyway, Mom has been in this parade a whole bunch of times, but she always walked with the Humane Society before.  This year, though, she suggested to the REGAP president that it might be a good idea for REGAP to be in the parade, and that way people could see how beautiful greyhounds are, and maybe they would want to adopt one of their very own.  So that's how it all happened, and since Mom had the idea for REGAP to do it, she thought she had better walk with them.  Also she wanted to show off her new greyhound, which is ME!


So we went there, and we met a whole bunch of greyhounds, and I sniffed their butts, and I was very happy to meet them.  Most of us had to wear weird green stuff like bandanas, hats, chaps, and things like that because our moms and dads wanted us to.  But because we love our humans, we agreed to do it.


Then after we got all dressed for the parade, we had to wait for a long time for it to start.  And even after it started, we had to wait until it was our turn to go.  We were number 80 out of 105, so we were at the back of the parade, and a lot of people already finished the parade before we even started.


Besides us greyhounds, there were tons of other people and dogs in the parade, and even a few horses.  Right across the street from where we were lined up, there was a bunch of kids, and they were a drill team, so some of them beat drums while other ones did a routine.  Mom thought that I might be freaked out by the drums, but I wasn't really.


What I did get kind of freaked out by was this car sort of thing that looked like a giant hamburger, except that it didn't smell like a hamburger, and you couldn't eat it.  But it made this noise all the time that was like "Moo!  Moo!  Moo!" and I guess it was supposed to sound like a cow, but it was really obnoxious and a little scary, so I barked at it.  None of the other dogs barked at it, but I did, and then it went away, so I guess I did my duty.


Anyway, while we were waiting for the parade to start, we all lined up and got a group picture taken, and here it is.  Mom and I are way over on the right-hand side.  We think there are 18 greyhounds in the picture, but it's kind of hard to count them.


When the parade started, but before it was our turn to go, we saw some other groups and floats go by.  This one was the MacDonald family clan, but their leprechaun got caught in the tree, which seemed pretty funny to us.  Finally, they got him loose, though.  I thought leprechauns were supposed to be short, but I guess that shows what I know!


Here's the Humane Society.


And the Irish Setter Club.  They had some very pretty dogs, but they weren't as pretty as us greyhounds, and there weren't as many of them either.


Finally, it was our turn to start walking!


We walked along the whole parade route, and lots of people were there to look at us and see what lovely dogs were are.  The parade route wasn't all that long, but by the time we got finished, I was pretty hot and tired.  So when we came back to the spot where we started, I just plopped down on the ground and refused to go any farther.  Mom sat down beside me, and we rested for a while, and she admitted that she was a bad mom because she hadn't brought any water for me.  Then finally we went back to the car and drove home, and I slept all evening.  Well, except for eating supper!