The Bumpy Road To The Beach

We drive through the town's main street with the windows half open. It is just a 5 minute ride to the beach and the shortest road is through the small town of "Henne strand". Actually, the town is not a lot more than that single main street.

The three bakeries are open, and a lot of tourists are already out and about during the early morning hours this Summer to buy fresh buns and Danish pastry. While we drive through, all eyes turn upon us. People stop and look. What is it they can hear, what is that awful noise coming from my car? It does sound like somebody must be torturing a dog in a horrific way?

We speed through town like a firetruck to an emergency. The sound doesn't come from a siren though, it is just Tilde in the back. She cries, howls, screams at the top of her lungs, and makes the strangest of drowning noises, all coming together to convey one single message, "come on! hurry! the beach, now!" as clear as possible.

When we make it to the parking lot at the beach without being stopped by animal welfare vigilantes, Tilde has forgotten all about the beach already. She jumps up at me, whining, reminding me we mustn't forget the most important thing. Even more important than the beach. Her orange "Chuck-it" ball. It dangles in my pocket and she knows it.

I really want to have a look at the beach and who's on it before I let her go off leash and we rush and tumble over the last sand dune that separates us from the beach and the ocean. Bummer, there is a dog already and he/she is leashed, so Tilde would have to wait.

Tilde makes the most perfect heel and we walk well past the leashed dog and his owner. Her patience was memorable and I was just caught in the moment of how well we just managed that. It turned out to be a moment too far. Tilde, at the very utmost borders of her patience now, is always ahead of me, even if we are just a moment or the blink of an eye apart.

She jumped, reached for my pocket, grabbed it, and almost teared the whole pocket right off my jacket to release her ball. It seemed to work. The ball fell out from a giant hole, where just a second before such a nice and tidy pocket was placed on my - formerly - special dog walking outfit.

"No! Tilde!", I said. How futile. Beach, sand, water, balls. I was on Tilde's turf now. She was already off, owning her ball with great pleasure, only dropping it to eat the crab shells she could find but quickly grabbing it again when I approached. This was Tilde's heaven. She had all she wished for. The environment, a toy, and me to tease. Life doesn't get better than that.

"Tilde?", I said, and showed the second "Chuck-It" ball I had kept hidden in one of the other eight pockets on my jacket. She dropped her ball on the spot and looked at me in horror. I felt great.