A Pittsburgh Adventure | May 27 2024, 02:08

“How about joining me in Pittsburgh?” Nadya has a volleyball tournament for three days. “And let’s take the pets with us!” It turned out that the hotel Nadya had booked, entirely by chance, happened to be pet friendly. They don’t even charge extra.

Yuki and our cat are generally accustomed to traveling. Yuki has traveled with us to Boston, Quebec, Savannah, New York, while the cat has been to Canada and Liza took him on a long trail. Thus, the 4.5-hour journey passed smoothly and quietly.

However, it was still noticeable that a country dog had made it to the big city. All around was noise, headlights, pedestrian paths often with various ventilation holes from which loud warm air blew, probably stinking to Yuki’s sensitive nose. In the city, it’s really a challenge to find a patch of grass, and the few there are get locked up with gates in the evening. Nevertheless, I’ve also gotten somewhat used to big cities myself.

We’re heading back tomorrow. I’ve always wondered how dogs perceive such trips? On one hand, all animals are comfortable when everything is predictable with minimal surprises and worries. Humans are like that too, some of them. On the other hand, mustn’t the brain somehow be rewarded for new emotions and experiences, even if it’s a canine brain? After all, biologically curiosity should be rewarded, right? Overall, I hope this is also a little “vacation” for Yuki and the cat, or perhaps even a “debut.”

Interestingly, just as we arrived and checked in, which was quite late, we went for a walk with Yuki in Point State Park. Somewhere, something suddenly boomed once, and Yuki got scared. But he soon recovered, and right then, we found out we were very close to the place from where fireworks were launched. The booms then continued for about 30 minutes non-stop, and the whole sky was filled with fireworks. But Yuki, it seems, was like — oh, it’s just fireworks, I remember them, we went to Philadelphia for the Fourth of July. And he bravely watched with us, even with a bit of interest. Good boy. We thought it was some large-scale super fireworks in anticipation of Memorial Day (which is tomorrow), but it turned out that it was just after a baseball game where the Pittsburgh Pirates won against the Atlanta Braves (Pirates won), and the fireworks at the end celebrated a beautiful finale.