One of the underappreciated benefits of having a dog is that, by virtue of the necessity of going outside at odd times to walk him, you sometimes see things in the sky that you would otherwise miss. Once, while walking Robbie, I saw the International Space Station pass overhead; another time, I saw a meteor. Just last week, I caught an awesome lightning show because Robbie demanded to be walked at just the right moment.

Well, today it happened twice. This morning at just after 4:30 AM, Robbie woke me up with his characteristic whine that, translated from dog to human, means “I have to pee!!!” Needless to say, my initial reaction was something other than gratitude. But, as it turned out, the dog’s timing allowed me to catch a rare, beautiful glimpse of the very early pre-dawn sky — including the morning star, Venus:

(Of course, Venus is really a planet, not a “star,” but you knew that.)

Then, almost 15 hours later, at a time when I would normally be sitting inside blogging or watching TV, Robbie again demanded a walk — and, looking at the very same horizon, I witnessed a beautiful, fleeting display of sunlit clouds:

The timing really was perfect. Literally five minutes later, the sun had moved on — except for a tiny, tiny sliver of pink at the top, and that too disappeared with 10 or 15 seconds after I took this picture:

Pretty neat. Thanks, Robbie. :)

P.S. Sometimes, walking the dog gives me the even rarer opportunity to videotape myself breaking my elbow while attempting to jump over a tennis net. But that’s not quite the same thing…