Zeros by Four

"What'ya got there..?"

Last season we went to a beach just South from Haifa, where route 2 aligns very closely to the sea. It is a completely amazing place, with both the smoothest sand beach, and some rocky sections. At that time we could easily exit from the road, park on the shoulder and walk over a small ridge and then come straight down to a pretty much deserted beach. During the winter they have blocked that possibility with crash barriers along this stretch. Terribly disappointing.

Thus, this year we had to find a new place. We wanted to bring the dogs and therefore we do not want a too crowdy beach. Especially now when we also have Barak, who still needs to be a bit supervised in his socialising with other dogs. Yesterday and today we went to a place further South instead, just below Zikhron Ya'akov. It is a wide and clean sand beach, with less people than the official beaches, since it is slightly tricky to drive there. We arrived just after 9 and then there were not much people at all. We met a few other dogs, and we gave Barak the confidence to run around freely and most of the time it did turn out very well. Today there was a woman with two medium size mutts, a female and a male, and to begin with everything was fine. They I saw that this other male was getting tense, demonstrating his dominance with his tail straight up in the air and then I knew that I had to intervene. They ended up having a small fight, only for a few seconds, but nothing serious. A scratch on either dog and an owner who at first was hysterical over our "aggressive" German Shepherds, until we talked to her and explained to her that both dogs had been bit by the other one, and no one was more or less to blame than the other.

Other than that incident, Barak has been happier than ever. At home it is always Goshen who initiates play and nibbles Barak to get him going, but on the beach it is the other way around. I have never seen him play like he did now. It was also the first time that we really took him far out into the sea water. Goshen runs out with no hesitation, and she knows how to avoid swallowing the waves. This means that she can cross the area where the waves break, and come out and swim in the calmer water. Barak is still insecure about it, and although we carried him out a few times, he swam straight back in to land. I hope that he will grow fond of swimming like Goshen did. There is no better exercise also for dogs than swimming.

Around noon the "Zeros by Four" have awaken and start to arrive at the beach. These are the obnoxious and completely self-centred Israelis who drive all the way down to the water-line with their thirsty four-wheel drive SUV or jeep, pulling a water scooter on a trailer. If you before that had 50 m to the closest neighbour, you will now suddenly find yourself toe-flirting with water scooters, party tents, inflatable animals and screaming children chased around by neurotic mothers, and macho men beating the waves with their big and noisy toys. This is about when we have had enough of sun for one day anyway, fortunately, and we start heading home to eat lunch before too many of them arrive. On the way up to the car a group of people were on their way down to the water as they got stuck in the deep and loose sand - with a 4WD and a scooter dragging behind. We could not help shrugging in glee all the way home.

So, "Zeros by Four" was not about dogs. My dogs are more considerate than the real zeros...