With a Name Like Dorothy

Having given my bulldogge the name of "Dorothy," I suppose I should not be surprised that she does not like the wind.  Even a mild city breeze seems to have a whiff of twister to it, as far as Dorothy is concerned.  When I get to a corner that is a particularly strong wind tunnel, I worry about grit being blown into my eyes, whereas Dorothy, in contrast, feels the same breeze and expects all the buildings to rise spinning into the air.

Her response to a mild gust is to shake her head or twist behind to look at her tail, to make sure that her hindquarters aren't somehow complicit.  When she experiences a stronger gust, she will first sit, then crouch, and then do a down-stay, flattening her little body on the sidewalk.  Today when she did this, people walking by oohed and ahhed and said something about her good training.  Which, okay, except for the little fact that I hadn't asked her to sit, or to lie down, or to stay, so she was really obeying her own commands--which is not obeying at all, is it?

Then when I went to either pick her up or give her leash a little encouraging tug, she rolled over on her back with her legs up in the air and showed the world her pink belly!  So there we are, having just crossed a busy street in Philadelphia, people walking past from all directions, and there Dorothy is in the midst of the moving crowd, a stationary, flipped, centipede, her legs a-wiggle.  I laughed.

Here are pictures of Dorothy, trying to escape the wind by means of a self-imposed down-stay on a street corner in Philadelphia.  She very much does NOT want the wind beneath her wings, thank you very much.