"Let's get in the car and go anywhere the mood takes us!" shouted Zuma.
It was one of those heavy summer days at the mountain cabin, the kind where the air sits thick and still and even the trees seem to be waiting for something to happen. Zuma had had enough. He grabbed his lead, his blankey, and his most determined expression, and made it very clear: it was time for an adventure.
Three hours later: Willkommen in München. 🐾
Munich in summer is a city that hums. Trams glide past ornate old buildings. Electric scooters weave silently through the crowds. And one small Jack Russell Terrier trots along the busy main road, map folded in his mouth, tail held high, singing to himself with the confidence of someone who absolutely knows where they're going.
(He did not know where he was going.)
The mission was simple: find water. The heat was extraordinary, the kind that turns every breath into warm soup. Zuma marched through the old town, past the grand Hauptbahnhof, past tourists posing for selfies, eyes fixed on the horizon, certain that water was just around the next corner.
First stop: a magnificent fountain. Two enormous stone creatures, a horse and a cow, loomed above him, water cascading between them, frogs spouting jets in every direction.
Zuma pinned his ears back and retreated behind his human's legs.
"This just ain't for me," he sighed. "Far too splashy." 🐸
Second stop: a beautiful park. Manicured gardens, flower beds, park benches, a raised building in the centre that surely — surely — contained water.
It did not contain water. It contained a string quartet, setting up for a concert.
Zuma leaped over pets and small children, spun in mid-air, and landed four paws wide in the middle of the musicians. Music stands scattered. Sheet music flew. The musicians stared.
"Where's the water?!" Zuma demanded, spinning in circles.
His human scooped him up and quietly ushered him out.
By now, Zuma was truly desperate. Tongue lolling, eyes rolling, paws dragging on the hot concrete, he raised his paws to the sky in surrender. His human picked him up and carried him around one corner, then another, until —
Cool air. Grass. Trees. Ducks.
Ducks.
"DUCKS!" Zuma's second wind arrived instantly. "Ducks mean water!"
He followed a green-headed duck with a fancy white collar across damp grass, damper grass, wet grass, and then, the most beautiful, clear, silent stream he had ever seen in his life. He leaped in. He splashed. He scooped water with both paws over his head. He didn't care what he looked like. He didn't care about the ducks. He needed that water and he needed it now.
And then, as he finally slowed from gulping, he heard something. Cheering. Splashing. Something familiar and yet completely impossible.
He looked up. Tilted his head. Narrowed his eyes.
People in wetsuits. Surfboards. In the middle of a city.
He padded closer, stood on his hind legs to see better, and there it was. A river, a dip, and the most perfect little wave he had ever seen. Surfers queuing along the bank, throwing in their boards, riding the flow, the crowd gasping and cheering with every ride.
Zuma stood open-mouthed for a very long time.
"Well, well," he muttered finally, shaking his head in wonder. "Keep an open mind. You just never know what magic a new city is hiding."
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