Ruby exploring the fallen tree

We were out for a walk Saturday afternoon. It was hot and Ruby was moving super slow. About fifty feet from our yard or three minutes into our walk, there was a crazy loud SNAP - kind of like a gunshot or a car crash or a three-story, one-hundred-year-old tree splitting in two, which is exactly what happened.



I swung around just in time to see this giant beautiful tree snap in two and crash to the ground. It was mildly windy Saturday, but not windy enough to bring a tree down. I am sure there was a reason, but I prefer to think the tree just fell or maybe its giant tree heart broke (which is kind of what it sounded like).

The tree was in our neighbor's yard, but fell across several yards and part of our driveway with the outlying branches spilling into the street. You can't really appreciate how massive a tree is until its spread out on the ground around you - one tree is a forest in and of itself.

Fortunately no one was hurt when the tree fell. Had Ruby stopped to do her business in our neighbor's yard (as she sometimes does), we might have been hit by some of the smaller branches, but not the bigger chunks.

The crazy part about this story is that this is the second time in ten years that I have been walking my dog when a massive tree crashed to the ground within feet of us. And in both cases, neither dog (Pip nor Ruby) even noticed.


Years ago I was walking Pip after a storm when a smaller tree snapped and missed him by about ten feet. Although I screamed, he didn't notice and just kept doing his thing.

Pip was on the anxious side as is Ruby - both brave when it matters (during stressful times and crisis) but frightened of ordinary things that other dogs take for granted. Pip was afraid of leaving our backyard whereas Ruby is actually afraid of our backyard. Ruby is terrified of squeaky toys, but giant trees crashing to the ground not so much.


Strange, mostly funny stuff, happens to me all the time. I'm kind of a magnet for the weird, quirky and unexpected experiences in life. Maybe Ruby is used to odd things happening on our walks so a tree falling didn't seem like a big deal. Or maybe dogs are just beautifully complicated (and sometimes unpredictable) and that's what also makes them so extraordinary.