This column initially appeared in the June 2019 edition of Gaston Alive! Magazine.
I walk the streets at night. You can typically find me out there between the hours of 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. There’s not much going on at this time, as you’d probably expect. You can hear the crickets chirping and occasionally you’ll hear the faint sounds of vehicles driving up and down Highway 321.
I’m probably the only person outside at this hour. This is not because this is where I want to be, but rather because Asbury needs to be. Asbury is a 6-year-old English Pointer, named after Asbury Park, a city in New Jersey. He’s a 53-pound white dog with brown patches and splotches over his body. They say he’s a hunting dog, but the only thing he hunts these days is a place to lay his head.
That is, until it becomes the middle of the night. That’s when he needs to go outside to use the bathroom. I get it – when you need to go, you need to go. It’s just the timing of it all that just seems a bit inconvenient. For me. He doesn’t mind at all. He doesn’t have to wake up and go to work in the morning like the rest of us.