Small Dog Warning
Please secure your tiny terriers.
The alert came through just after breakfast.
Not the usual tone—the long, low wail that meant weather rolling in from the Gulf—but the sharper chime they used for updates, advisories, things that were supposed to be informational and not alarming.
25 mile an hour winds. Small dog warning.
I read it twice.
Then a third time, just in case my coffee hadn’t fully negotiated its treaty with my brain.
“Small dog warning?” I said, out loud, to no one in particular.
It should have been a maritime advisory—small craft, high winds, the usual. We lived less than a mile from the water. That was the language here—boats and tides and the occasional stubborn squall that came in sideways and left lawn chairs in places they had no business being.
My phone chimed again, as if in answer.
Please secure small dogs.
I stared at it.
Then I did what any reasonable person does when reality tilts half a degree off center.
I called my best friend.
He answered on the second ring, already laughing.
“You got it too,” he said.
“I got it too,” I agreed. “Tell me this is a typo.”
“Nope. Small dog warning.”
“That is not a thing.”
“Welcome to Florida.”
He said it with the calm certainty of someone who had lived here long enough to mean it.
I leaned against the kitchen counter and looked out the window. The sky was doing its usual trick where it couldn’t decide between blue and threat. The palm fronds were already starting to twitch.
“You mean small craft,” I said carefully, as if correcting it might restore order to the universe.
“I mean,” he said, “that if the wind gets up to twenty-five, Mrs. Ellison’s Pomeranian becomes a projectile.”
I closed my eyes.
“Projectile.”
“Last year,” he continued, “we had a cold front come through. Not even dramatic. Just breezy. And that little dog went skidding across the courtyard like a decorative pillow with opinions.”
I made a sound that was not quite a laugh.
“You’re making this up.”
“I am absolutely not making this up. We have a protocol now.”
“A protocol.”
“Staff does a sweep. Doors get checked. Dogs get… encouraged… to remain indoors.”
There was a pause.
“And if they don’t?” I asked.
“Then we keep an eye on the hedges,” he said. “They tend to collect there.”
I looked out at my own yard, at the low fence that would stop absolutely nothing determined to be airborne.
The wind picked up, just enough to make the chimes on my neighbor’s porch start their uncertain conversation.
“Twenty-five miles an hour,” I said. “That’s not even that strong.”
“It is if you weigh six pounds and believe in adventure.”
I laughed then, properly, because that was the only reasonable response left.
My phone chimed a third time.
Update: gusts possible.
“Gusts,” I read.
“Oh, that’s not good,” he said. “Gusts are how you lose a dachshund.”
“Of course they are.”
We sat there for a moment, connected by nothing more than shared disbelief and the quiet acceptance that the world is sometimes exactly as ridiculous as it sounds.
“Go with it,” he said finally. “Tie down anything you don’t want to lose.”
“Plants, patio furniture…”
“Poodles,” he added.
I nodded, though he couldn’t see it.
Outside, the wind gathered itself, considering.