Galileo and Maia on a date at the Unadilla Drive-In movie

It’s a monsoon season here in upstate New York. Today we had one of those storms that used to make bronze-age people believe in things like the apocalypse (or for some Timothy LaHaye readers, still does). But up here in the Catskill Mountains of New York we know better – it’s really Rip van Winkle’s bowling party.

We have two beautiful golden retrievers ,Galileo and Maia. Galileo is almost 110 pounds of majestic muscle and fur. A more noble looking creature you will never find. As he sits here at my feet, constantly on guard against such grave predators as the Tyrannosaurus Rabbit, or of the Groundhoggus Rex, it’s hard to believe that this paragon of heroism crawled onto the couch to lay on me to have me protect him from the thunder. 

He never used to be afraid of thunder. As a ten-pound pup, he’d run around outside in the fiercest of storms. But this year he began showing signs of fear of the thunder-gods. My wife tells me that goldens acquire that trait later in life. 

The first sign was a few months ago, when in the middle of the night he started waking us up during storms with his whining and snuffling at us on the bed. 

Last night, in the middle of the night, he crawled onto my side of the bed to snuggle against me. He doesn’t usually come up on the bed late at night, so I was surprised. I was sleeping and hadn’t heard the storm (my snoring probably drowned it out). 

All of a sudden I feel the side of the bed dip as his weight was distributed on it. Then, with a soulful sigh, he dropped in next to me and put his face right in mine. 

Galileo is an in-your-face kind of dog. He’ll lick you like a puppy. He has no concept of his size. So he licked my face until I pet him, and he wouldn’t let me stop petting him till the storm subsided. 

This afternoon, during another rendition of the storm, he did the same to me on the couch. 

Maia, our “emergency back-up dog” (as Dave Barry would say) hasn’t been bothered at all by thunder, but I think she’s beginning to imitate Galileo. She climbed up on the other side of the couch, boxing me in. I had two hundred pounds of golden retriever sitting on my lap, licking my face. 

Everyone should be so lucky.

P.S. The photo was taken last year at the Unadilla Drive-in, not far from where we live. Yes, there really are still drive-in theaters. And the dogs love it. They play frisbee with us and all the kids at the theater in the field in front of the screen, for about an hour before show-time. 

Last time, we saw the awesome double-feature of Star Trek and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. Eat your heart out.