Not when it’s 85° outside and your HVAC system quits. We’re not even there yet, not even close to the Dog Days, so named for the constellation Sirius and the ancients’ belief it contributed to drought and madness, goes the lore. Those days are still months away. Aside from the sweat-inducing heat upstairs in this house, up in the loft where I work my full-time remote job, a broken system leads to one unhappy canine in particular and a good deal of worry in his people, as he has reached the sunset of his life and can’t tolerate extremes. This is what I tried to impress upon our HVAC guy when we were tossing around words like urgency.

Wouldn’t you know our HVAC guy was out of town for two weeks when we realized things were about to go sideways. We were prepared for this eventuality in general, as our old system had been here since the house was built in ’95. We had a ballpark estimate and cash set aside, which does not make parting with it any less painful when that day comes. Also it’s one of those home improvement projects that costs a king’s ransom but leaves you with nothing fun or beautiful to look at, like when you remodel a room or buy new appliances. It does, however, stop the sweat from dripping down your backside and into your britches when you’re trying to stay focused during a client call, and it keeps the old guy from panting. And it legit adds to the resale value of this house.

Anyway, it is done.

Meanwhile, the notion a dog can lead one to madness seems plausible enough to me. Henry-the-Hound is still settling in, still acclimating, still learning what it means to live inside a home with people and in his case, with one other dog. He gets mixed reviews from the dog with tenure, who at times steals his food and at other times gets into it with him when it’s time to retire to the bedroom for the evening, but somehow still at other times really digs his company. We hoped inviting this one into our pack would improve Scout’s quality of life during these twilight years, but I’m not sure we can truthfully say this has been the outcome. For his part, Scout possibly sees Henry as a needless interloper into his family, people he once owned exclusively but now must share.

Henry at least has acknowledged Scout’s alpha status, and will gladly step aside, for example, if Scout manages to shoulder his way in front of Henry’s food bowl before one of us can scold him and snap it up. There are no food fights in this house. There has lately been jockeying for position in the big bed at night, though, and it has gotten ugly at times. Henry desperately wants to belong. Scout is happy enough to leave him out in the living room where he thinks he belongs, in the armchair or on the sofa.

The thing is, Scoutie lasts a grand total of about a minute in our bed before his old-man Chessie thermostat pushes him into such a state of discomfort he must retire to the floor, or to his own bed, there to stay for the balance of the night. It is at this moment we typically invite Henry into our bed. Everybody seemed to have settled well enough into this routine until the last few days, during which Scout has communicated clearly to Henry that he needs to stay out of the bedroom altogether and mind his own goddamn business. Henry complies. We urge him to reconsider. When he does, that is when the trouble starts.

Here is a truth about dogs: Whenever there is trouble, there is usually an idiotic human behind it. The dogs know what they know and they’re being dogs. We’re upsetting the canine order by making new rules and should know to leave well enough alone. I wonder where we’ll be with all this a year from now. I’ve had multiples of dogs at the same time during other chapters of my adult life, and I must say, this particular combination is a different kind of challenge. Different breeds, different temperaments, different ages (dramatically), different sensibilities.

Take Henry’s reaction to storms versus Scout’s, for example. Scout sleeps through them, always has. Henry doesn’t know what to do with himself. The last time a big one rolled through, something happened during the night that rendered every flooring surface in our house unacceptable to him, if it was not covered in a rug. “Everything is hot lava,” is how my son put it, which is accurate. The situation has eased somewhat in the intervening months, but even now, when it is time to leash up and go outside, Henry surveys the target—the front door—from a safe spot behind the sofa, sizes up the challenge ahead of him, works up some steam, and then…bolts across the room like a cartoon dog, until he is safely anchored on the doormat. Other times, for whatever reason, it is no big deal.

He has also taken to spending his afternoons on a particular step about a third of the way up to the office loft, where Scoutie and I will have been for the entire day up to that point. It happens right after Henry’s noon pee break. We come back inside the house, I unleash him, and instead of heading back to where he was comfortably curled up and napping on the sofa, he assumes his position on the step, that step. I can beg and plead and encourage him to join us, and he might, but only if there is a distant rumble of thunder. On fair-weather days, not a chance. Who knows why.

The most imperiled aspect of life with Henry is daily walking, and especially running. First of all, he is surprisingly strong and sinewy for a chap of 44 pounds. When he decides to pursue a scent—a perfectly reasonable avocation for a scent hound—he does so instantly and without warning. So what happens is, he takes off in the general direction of the odor, and then my arm painfully disconnects from my body at the shoulder and follows him there. We’ve narrowly escaped run-ins with other walkers and runners and even cars during such episodes. I don’t need to tell you the danger this proclivity poses to life and limb.

He has also become indiscriminately reactive. The motivators for this emerging habit include but are not limited to the following:

• FedEx trucks
• UPS trucks
• USPS trucks
• Any vehicle with a turbo-charged engine
• Any vehicle with a diesel engine
• Any vehicle pulling a work trailer loaded with tools or equipment that rattles
• Ditto work vans
• People on bicycles
• People on skateboards
• Specific neighbors
• Ibis picking their way across our lawn in search of grubs

He has doubtless learned some of this from Scout; the rest is all Henry. For the time being I have suspended my runs with this doggo because it is simply too dangerous (see imperiled above), and because I still need to run, and that is too bad for both of us.

In spite of all of it, though, we do love him to pieces. He has a sense of humor that leaves us laughing so hard at times we cannot breathe. He is a love sponge. He has quickly learned what he can and cannot chew upon. He is trustworthy outside of his crate for hours at a time when we leave the house. And he is mainly house trained—when there is the occasional transgression, it is most often the fault of an idiotic human.

Elsewhere Around the Homestead

There have been small projects and large-ish ones—pollen abatement, outside planting, inside scrubbing—and some growing restlessness, some disenchantment here and there. We’ve scrutinized our calendars and nailed down our time off, and started planning some of our upcoming travel, not all of it quite yet. In a few weeks Henry and Scout will go with us to Asheville for a few days; it will be Henry’s first time in the car for more than a trip across town or to Fort Fisher Beach. He must share the back seat with Scout and Scout with him, so there could be trouble. Henry needs to learn that going on adventures can be fun, and we’re about to try to demonstrate this to him.

There has also been delicious porch time (with dogs) now that the pollen is gone and the weather has cooled after a rogue early-season heat wave left us in misery. We’ve been on long bike rides (without dogs) here and across town, and observed the budding of trees and flowers and no end of coastal wildlife. After a dry spell and an irksome hip injury, I am resuming my running habit. I spent an hour letting an expert fit me for new shoes and had my feet sized using 3D imagery for the first time ever. That was transformative and resulted in the best fit I’ve experienced in running shoes to date and I don’t know why on earth I haven’t done this sooner.

To running, I have added yoga (resumed it, that is) at least two times a week, a training modality I don’t enjoy if I’m being honest, but it allows me to run. Only rarely do I come home and say, I wish I hadn’t done that; thank the universe for the hot tub, is all I can say. On foul-weather days I carve out an hour to spend on the rowing machine immersed in a particular home improvement series whose hosts are bright spots in the firmament and underline all that is good in this world, when we all need good things to hang onto.

I leave you with this exquisite Bird of Paradise procured at the grocery store yesterday, and isn’t it a marvel such a thing is even possible.