It's four o'clock and the sky has that look. Not dramatic. Just grey, and settled, and clearly not going anywhere. The rain isn't even falling so much as hanging in the air, the fine kind that soaks you slower and more completely than a proper downpour ever could.
You look out of the window and think: not today. Surely not today.
And then you feel it. The stare. You don't have to turn round to know it's happening — you can feel it on the side of your face, that patient, unblinking certainty. You turn anyway. There they are, sitting by the door, lead already somehow in the vicinity, eyes moving from you to the handle and back again with the quiet confidence of someone who has never once considered that the answer might be no.
“It's raining,” you say, out loud, to a dog.
This means nothing to them. Rain is not a reason. Rain has never been a reason. Rain is just weather that happens to the outside, and the outside is where the smells are, and the smells are new today, and every second you spend explaining meteorology is a second those smells go un-smelled.
So you go. Of course you go. You always go.
And here is the thing nobody tells you about the wet walk: it's better than you think it's going to be. The streets are empty. The park is yours. The world has gone soft and quiet and a little bit shining, and your dog — your dog is transformed. Ears back, tail high, they hit the grass like they've been let out of somewhere. They find the one enormous puddle and stand in the middle of it, just to check it's still there. They look back at you, mud to the elbows, grinning that unmistakable grin, and the look says: see? SEE? I told you. Best day. Every day is the best day, but this one especially.
You're wet through. You don't mind. It's hard to mind anything watching that.
The only sad part comes after — the shivering at the door, the deep damp chill that takes an age to shake, the small guilt of having kept them out in it. That part, at least, has an answer. A proper waterproof coat like the quick-drying Sarah Raincoat means the joy stays and the cold doesn't — they come home happy and warm rather than happy and soaked to the skin. It's a small thing. It just happens to be the thing that lets you say yes more often.
Because you were always going to say yes. You both knew it the moment the sky went grey. The lead was already by the door. The stare had already started. And somewhere out there was a puddle with your dog's name on it.
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