Today we crossed the bridge to a place where most dogs never get to go. The Singapore Yacht Club. Mum and Dad whispered "rare treat" as we walked in, like I would somehow understand they're not members. I caught the word "members" and immediately decided I would behave better than every dog there. This is my main competitive drive in life. Be the best dog in a room I was not technically invited to.
Then I saw the market.
Tails By The Bay had set up tents along the harbour edge, and every tent had something I wanted. Artisan treats in glass jars I tried to sniff but Mum kept pulling me on. People who only wanted to know my name. A photobooth where a dog with one ear up was getting his prints painted. A training class going on in a roped-off square, dogs sitting and lying down for treats I was already plotting how to convince Dad to enrol me in, because those looked like premium treats and I am owed premium treats.
The harbour itself was the bit I couldn't get over. Yachts in the water, sun on the water, the kind of bright that makes you squint and sneeze at the same time. Big boats that do not smell of anything a dog respects, but the water slaps against them in a satisfying way and there were gulls, and gulls are, as everyone knows, my sworn enemies and also the most interesting thing I have ever seen.
We sat at picnic bench 113 under a striped tent and I watched everyone come in and out while Mum kept refilling my water bowl from a teal flask she'd been thinking ahead about all week. It was warm and the shade of the tent was the good kind, and I did the thing where I lie down but keep my head up so I miss nothing. There was a breeze off the water that carried the whole market to me in order, coffee, then something grilled, then a hundred other dogs, then salt, and I read it all like Dad reads his phone in the morning, seriously and for too long. A very small dog in a bandana came past and we agreed, without words, that we were both doing an excellent job. An older dog with a grey face moved slowly between the benches and everyone made way for him, and I understood that too, that some dogs have earned the slow walk.
Best moment of the day was when Dad scooped me up for a photo with the Tails By The Bay banner behind us.
Big harbour, big sky, both my humans, my own tongue making its usual dramatic exit. That photo is going in the diary because I look very, very pleased with the geography of my life. You could see the whole afternoon in it if you knew where to look, the heat and the salt and the fact that for once nobody was telling me a place was not for dogs.
We are not yacht club members. But for one Saturday in late June, the yacht club decided dogs were the only members that mattered, and I intend to bring it up at every opportunity for the rest of my natural life. I will be thinking about that ferry of artisan biscuits all week, and about the training class, and about whether, if I am very good, we might be allowed back before another whole year of me not being a member goes by.