{"id":3177,"date":"2025-08-13T17:02:05","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T01:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/?p=3177"},"modified":"2025-08-13T17:02:05","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T01:02:05","slug":"dog-days-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/?p=3177","title":{"rendered":"Dog days down"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The &#8220;dog days of summer&#8221; ended on August 11 this year, but here in Oregon we&#8217;ve had some very hot days since then. Fingers crossed that now we&#8217;ve seen the last of the 90s and triple digits for this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The dog days derive from the position of Sirius, the &#8220;Dog Star,&#8221; in the night sky in the northern hemisphere. Because they occur during a hot stretch of summer, they have become shorthand for the hottest, most miserable time of year&#8211;to me, and I think to many others as well. Just ask Al Pacino&#8217;s character in the sweaty 1975 crime thriller <em>Dog Day Afternoon.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"338\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/deck-coyote-7-25-smaller-338x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3178\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/deck-coyote-7-25-smaller-338x450.jpg 338w, https:\/\/stefoff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/deck-coyote-7-25-smaller-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/stefoff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/deck-coyote-7-25-smaller-113x150.jpg 113w, https:\/\/stefoff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/deck-coyote-7-25-smaller-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/stefoff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/deck-coyote-7-25-smaller-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/stefoff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/deck-coyote-7-25-smaller-624x832.jpg 624w, https:\/\/stefoff.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/deck-coyote-7-25-smaller-rotated.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 338px) 100vw, 338px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m lucky to have a cool place to work, and I spent this year&#8217;s dog days almost entirely inside, working on a major writing project that consumed all of May, June, and July. But this young canid, not a dog but a pretty close relative, ventured onto our deck one afternoon during the recent dog days, which were not only blisteringly hot but desperately dry. We keep a large water dish at ground level near the deck, so I was glad to see this creature overcome wariness sufficiently to come out of the woods for a drink.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8220;dog days of summer&#8221; ended on August 11 this year, but here in Oregon we&#8217;ve had some very hot days since then. Fingers crossed that now we&#8217;ve seen the last of the 90s and triple digits for this year. The dog days derive from the position of Sirius, the &#8220;Dog Star,&#8221; in the night [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[108],"class_list":["post-3177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","tag-hot-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3179,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3177\/revisions\/3179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefoff.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}