Vegas is two cities. There is the Vegas on postcards, and then there is the Vegas that a pitbull actually lives in. Ours runs on desert time. Ours runs on the sun.
5:47 a.m., the desert walk
Summer in Vegas means you either walk before the sun or you do not walk. We are out the door before the sky has decided on a color. The asphalt is cold. The air has that thin, clean, dusty quality that you only get in the desert before anyone is awake. Knight does the lead. Aston does the pace. Stormi does the chaos.
We go to the empty wash at the end of the neighborhood, the one with the rabbit trails and the sage brush that smells like a spice cabinet. Stormi buries her nose in it and comes back with a look on her face like she has discovered fire.
7:15 a.m., the first breakfast
Yes, there are two. Do not tell anyone.
8:30 a.m., the puppuccino run
We swing through the drive through on the way home from the vet on shot days, or sometimes just because we love them. Three puppuccinos. Three smug faces. Knight licks his in three seconds and looks around for tax. Aston licks hers like she is at a tasting. Stormi sticks her entire head inside the cup and reemerges wearing foam like a wig.
This is the best four dollars we spend every week.
11:00 a.m., the long couch
By mid morning the heat is starting to mean it. The tile gets cold, the blackout curtains come down, and the pack claims the couch in formation. Knight is a loaf. Aston is a comma. Stormi is an exploded diagram of a dog. There is snoring. There are paw twitches. There is someone chasing a rabbit somewhere that we cannot see.
Vegas heat makes midday a religion. We do not fight it. We nap through it.
2:30 p.m., the enrichment hour
Because three napping pitbulls at 2:30 p.m. becomes three unemployed pitbulls by 3:00 p.m., we rotate through a short enrichment block. Lick mats loaded with yogurt and peanut butter. A snuffle mat with dried chicken hidden in the flaps. A frozen Kong for Knight, because he has the attention span of a Victorian widow and this buys us fifteen minutes of quiet.
6:45 p.m., the golden hour zoomies
The desert does this thing at dusk where the mountains go pink and the sky goes peach and the whole house gets warm and soft. This is also when the zoomies happen. Stormi starts it. Stormi always starts it. She tears around the living room like a small cyclone of bad decisions, and Knight pretends to be above it for exactly ten seconds before he joins her and the house shakes.
Aston watches from the couch and judges. The judgment is loving. The judgment is also very clear.
8:10 p.m., patio time
Our favorite thirty minutes of the day. We open the sliding door, the air has finally cooled into something humane, and everyone files out to the patio. Stormi collects a toy. Knight collects a spot on the warm concrete. Aston collects compliments. The sky does its last trick of the day, and we sit there in the good dark and do absolutely nothing.
10:00 p.m., the lights out parade
Everyone to their beds. Not their beds. Our bed. This was always going to be our bed. We knew it when we bought the big one. We knew it when we bought the small one. We knew it when we bought the medium one, which is where Stormi ended up, because she follows Aston everywhere and Aston chose the bottom corner tonight.
Vegas is quiet at night. The pack sighs in unison. We close our eyes. We start over in the morning.
