By Mary Pannabecker Steiner

Yesterday morning I asked my husband if he thought the dog's bug bites/rash were making him feeling crummy or if it was just the heat. His response?

"Well, it IS the dog days of summer." Groan.

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He then proceeded to explain to me the origin of the phrase, "dog days of summer". When he was in college, one of his journalism profs told the students that it was called "dog days" because during the hottest summer days, newspapers struggled to find interesting things to write about. So they wrote editorial comments on why dog owners should leash their dogs.

Okay, this sounded plausible but since my husband sometimes makes up stories just to entertain me, I'm still skeptical. I thought about checking it out on the Internet, but it was too hot.

Here's the thing. When we get into one of these horribly hot weather ruts, it's really easy to blame everything on the heat. Stomach is upset? It's the heat. Headache? It's the heat. Everyone - including the dog - is grumpy. It's the heat. You get the idea.

Thanks to daughter number 1, who unearthed our inflatable wading pool from the garage "attic", we have solved this problem - at least temporarily. Last night, after spending another hour moving garage sale items from my mom's condo to her garage, we were hot and sweaty but didn't want to waste an otherwise perfectly good evening. So we filled up the little pool and did what we used to do when our babies were tiny and going to the pool after a day of work seemed way too hard.

Ike, the Icon dog, still is not sure he likes this idea. But we thought it was fun.