“Plans for this weekend include turning wine into water.”

What if dogs were racist? Would they care about fur color….. “son, only play with other tan dogs”? Or maybe it would depend on breed, “honey, only play with other German Shepards, never poodles”. Better yet it could depend on occupation. “I’m a sled dog while you’re only a running companion, leave me alone”. Maybe the neighborhood they live in could be the way they choose which dogs to associate with and which to shun? Size could be the determining factor, “see how tall that dog is, they are probably dumb”. Luckily dogs don’t discriminate. Just watch at a dog park. Big black and white dogs wag their tails and play with tiny tan dogs. A service dog chases after the same ball as the off-duty police dog. So if dogs don’t discriminate then why do we?

Sleeping in his car was never the plan but sometimes things don’t work out as planned. This had been his life for the last three months and he was just beginning to get used to it. He didn’t actually enjoy it, but he had accepted it and come to terms with it. Or at least he thought he had. All that changed when he put the key into the ignition, turned it and the engine didn’t make a sound.

Wandering down the path to the pond had become a daily routine. Even when the weather wasn’t cooperating like today with the wind and rain, Jerry still took the morning stroll down the path until he reached the pond. Although there didn’t seem to be a particular reason Jerry did this to anyone looking in from the outside, those who knew him well knew exactly what was going on. It could all be traced back to a specific incident that happened exactly 5 years previously.

He had three simple rules by which he lived. The first was to never eat blue food. There was nothing in nature that was edible that was blue. People often asked about blueberries, but everyone knows those are actually purple. He understood it was one of the stranger rules to live by, but it had served him well thus far in the 50+ years of his life.

The water rush down the wash and into the slot canyon below. Two hikers had started the day to sunny weather without a cloud in the sky, but they hadn’t thought to check the weather north of the canyon. Huge thunderstorms had brought a deluge o rain and produced flash floods heading their way. The two hikers had no idea what was coming.