K Nine Day
September 13, 2009

Three-squared minus five days ago today, the dedicated staff of edhat.com dressed to the nines and drove nine minutes to Hendry's Beach before the crack of 9:09 in the morning on Nine Day; September 9, 2009. As we were heading to the beach, we passed a German Shepard walking toward his car.

"Aren't you going to stay?" we asked.

"Nein," was the German Shepard's reply. Apparently he knew nothing about the dog count that was about occur.

At the beach we ran into some old Edhat friends, two gigantic Irish Wolfhounds, imported from Ireland, a black lab named Bella, who had recently made friends with a skunk, and a white Scottie, who had walked in the Edhat Dog Walk last June.

At the stroke of nine-o-nine, we entered the sanctioned leash-free zone on the east side of the slough, to count the canines. The tally operation was going well until we realized that counting dogs at the beach is like herding cats. At the Dog Parade, the dogs pretty much walk straight in one direction. But, at the beach, there's no true north. And even if there were, there's no good reason to take the shortest path to get there.

Dogs passed us going one way, and then they passed us going the other. Keeping track of Labrador retrievers was a labor-intensive exercise. And after a while, we couldn't make heads or tails out of which dogs we'd tallied and which ones we hadn't.

Our count was off. Our dogs were tired. So, we went to high ground in the middle of the beach - the place between the front nine and the back nine, so to speak -- and we did a broad view count. The final answer as to how many crazy canines were at Hendry's Beach on 09/09/09 at 9:09AM is 20.

The Edhat Dog was not one of the twenty because she was not there. As proved by her sub-four-minute mile last June, she is requires a lot of oversight. Yes, she can be a very bad dog.

A bunch of Edhat subscribers guessed 19 dogs in the weekly contest. Only CupHandle guessed 20. He/She wins an Edhat t-shirt.

Pictures From the Beach

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