I have always called LolliPop my little Mud Puppy. Just like Pearl was my Baked Potato, there’s no rhyme or reason for the name. Until now. Until Ojai.

Thrilled to have a yard again, she can’t just go out in the back and just do her business. Oh no. She’s got to climb up the hill behind the house and investigate every corner of the property, every single time she goes outside.

Dense in vegetation and ripe with the scent of coyote that pass in the early morning hours, there’s lots to entertain her. The dirt on the slope is more clay than dust, and because it’s rained several times in the past couple of weeks, right now it is a thick and slick and sticky paste.

Sometimes she calmly walks along the length of the ramp and plods back to the deck. More likely, though, she’ll take off from the top of the hill, ears and tongue flapping as she comes crashing down at top speed, energized, I like to think, by a sense of adventure. Freedom. Reckless abandon. Probably, she’s just having a damn good time.

She shuffles to the door, mud caked to her feet like sasquatch slippers. The first time she walked in, at 6:30 in the morning, I thought she’d stepped in poo. It took me by surprise and it took me 20 minutes to clean the muck from between her pads. Last night I pulled off the chunky clumps and stuck her little feet in the sink. This afternoon, I just carried a big bowl outside and plunked those paws, one at a time, in the warm water. Complimentary Puppy Paw Scrub and Drying Massage.

With all this trouble, it makes more sense to just take her outside on the leash and stand there with her while she pees, confined to one clean and pristine spot.

Invariably the rains will stop and the mud will dry. It is Southern California, after all.

She’s a country girl, and and she’s happy. She can run, and play. And breathe.

Think about it.

When was the last time you walked barefoot in the rain, jumped with both feet in puddles or bared your naked puppies to the mud?