Nadi's morning routine: What does a dog do?

As I have gotten older I have become a lot less adventurous and my life has taken on many routine moments. Almost every day is similar to the one before and while I don't want to pin it on her, Nadi (my dog) is a big part of the reason why my life is that way.

I don't mind, the joy she brings into my life more than makes up for any lack of change of scenery that I have in my life.

Every morning when we wake up Nadi is looking forward to 2 things: First and foremost, the serving of yum-yums or "dog food" as most people call it.

The second thing is our morning "poopie walks" and trust me, I have tried to just make this "walks" but if I dont put the word "poopie" on there she doesn't get excited.

She takes many visual cues to know that we are about to go outside. If I put on different clothes or start milling about near our front door she gets excited. I love how worked up she can get about something that we have done that is exactly the same every single time we do it.

Our first stop is the unfortunately trash heap on the other side of the road from my building. She has established this area as our first port of call and she marks her territory and then does little back leg scratches on the ground.

Then we proceed down the road past the various construction sites for our next stop.

I'm really looking forward to the day when they are done building these, because they start banging on stuff at around 630 in the morning

They continue with this relentless noise until around 6pm every day with a 1 hour break for lunch. During the 12-1 window I get a glimpse into what this area could be like if there wasn't constant construction... but anyway, this post isn't about me, it is about Nadi.

She never stops to say hello to any of the workers because she is on a mission. She is completely focused on the next destination which is just down the street at yet another trash dump.

There is this tiny patch of grass down here that grows through the cement and this is something that Nadi must mark every single day.

How dare those other doggies in the neighborhood come and visit her spot of grass? Those inconsiderate jerks! Well, she covers up their scent and reclaims it for the Shih-Tzu homeland and we carry on to gigantic construction site that is just a bit down the road.

Perhaps you can see the giant steel beams that are shooting up out of the ground over that fence. This building is going to be substantially larger than the others and I am happy that I live two blocks from here. This site is going to be going on for a very long time, perhaps years, and they use industrial grade equipment and will have dozens of people banging on stuff all at the same time. I feel for the people that live in the condos, as well as the owners of those condos that struggle to have tenants behind me.

The workers don't realize it, but Nadi is very grateful for the piles of dirt and sand that they put up outside the fence, this is a favorite spot of hers for sniffing and also a likely candidate for a drop off out of her back-side.

The rainy season keeps the workers lurking in the shadows often. This is normally filed with people hanging all over the place and nobody following any sort of safety protocols. But dogs don't care about that.

We make a turn at the next road that leads back to my condo and pass two additional construction sites and this one is now loading up the scaffolding, indicating that the exterior of the building is finished. Fantastic! Once again Nadi completely ignores all the workers even if they make cute sounds to get her attention. She is on a mission and that mission does not include being nice to strangers.

At the end of the walk we are back in the same place we started right near the entrance of my condo. Today, I have no human food back in my apartment so I decided to stop in for a very inexpensive feast. If you look closely you can see Nadi calmly waiting on her seat as my food is prepared.

I had previously written about this place and how the food is not particularly good, but all that food in front of us and a coffee as well is only $2 and you can't argue with the price. Nadi just sits there patiently waiting for the few bites of hot dog that she will receive for being calm. Once again she is completely unconcerned about the staff and basically ignores them when they come to the table She is focused because she knows the objective here: be a good girl and the hot dogs will come your way.

After this we normally will walk a bit more, sometimes back to the same places we already visited so she can work off her hot dog calories and then we go back home. At which point she gets to work on almost immediately falling back asleep.

So that is what my dog gets so worked up about every morning and if we ever have to skip it because of rain she doesn't understand and becomes very upset about it.

I wish I could get so excited about something so simple and always be happy about it even though it is the same every day. I think it is one of the favorite parts of every day of her life. So easy, so simple, so routine, yet she looks forward to it and gets super excited every time we do it. I find that amazing.