Nashville Dogs

Tomorrow we'll be here four weeks. We are up and running at home, with much of our stuff still packed up and stored in the third bedroom of our apartment here in Bellevue, an area in the southwest reaches of Nashville. We have closed on the sale of our house in Pennsylvania, made strides toward buying a condo in a nearby geezer community, gotten our Tennessee tag for the car, and tried three nearby Mexican restaurants, all very good. And I've even worked a day as an extra on the ABC TV show "Nashville." We love it here.

Through it all, at least two or three times a day, you guessed it, walking with Grace. The apartment complex is very pet friendly. One of the office guys lives one corridor over with a big golden dog named Harvey. He's not playful, but he's friendly. Many other dogs are walked around the grassy areas between buildings and surrounding the whole property. We rarely go out without encountering at least one or two dogs. Rabbits are also plentiful. Grace has caught two already. Squirrels, chipmunks and moles round out the mammals, and cicadas and lizards add to the fun. And that's just around here.

A five minute drive away is Edwin Warner Park, a 625 acre chunk of land with a maze of paved and unpaved nature trails, a Nature Center, an amphitheater, benches, trash cans and best of all, a huge fenced in dog park, where there are always dogs to play with, and a dog-height water fountain. Pretty much every day we get Grace dressed in her collar and harness and take her for an hour walk on the trails or romp in the dog park. We do it early in the morning before the day gets too hot, and more importantly, before the dreaded Nashville rush hour traffic builds. Then we come home to air conditioning and Grace's king size Sleep Number bed. She somehow manages to take up the whole thing, and sleeps until the afternoon walk.

She doesn't have a best friend here yet. But then, neither do I.