"That's a real beautiful dog you got there, miss!"

People in Mississippi LOVE Franklin. I mean, really, people everywhere love Franklin, but it's different down here. Goldendoodles are all but common here (read: most people have never heard of them, thinks he's a poodle cut wrong, look at me funny when I say goldendoodle, and/or reply with "golden-what?"), and so when you combine that with his unique coloring, Franklin becomes quite the attention-hog.

Some examples: 

• Josh, Franklin and I walked past two tables of people sitting outside of a cafe. The first table stopped Josh to talk about Frank, the second table stopped me to ask about Frank. 
• Frank and I will be walking on the sidewalk, and people driving by will shout out their car windows to us. "That's a beautiful dog!!!" one lady yelled with her head strained back looking at us while she drove by. "What kind of dog is that? He's real a beautiful dog!" another man yelled as he rolled through a stop sign. 
• There's a lady down the street who is often outside when we go on our afternoon walk. "How's Franklin doin' today?" Not me, my dog. 

I'm not complaining about this, as it has proven that having Franklin seems to make it a lot easier to talk to people and get to know them. He basically serves as an icebreaker that people are incredibly interested in and obsessed with and don't mind asking you about. 

Franklin, however, is not quite sure how he feels about it down here. 

 Take the kitchen stools, for example. Every day when we eat, he insists on sitting just like this, with his body against the wall and his head and front paws under the stool. When we finish eating, he does not know how to get out. He whines, tries to move but the stool shakes and he gets scared, he whines some more, until finally (after 5-10 minutes of this), he gets the courage up to just go for it and you hear the stool wobble around and almost topple over. And yet, after 7 days of this, he still has to lay in the exact same position. Grace has never been his strong suit.

Other happenings around town:

Everyday I walk past the Coca-Cola museum (where Coca-Cola was bottled for the first time!) and every day I read the sign that says "Ice-cold Coca-Cola!" and everyday I want a Coke. Yesterday, that dream became a reality. We got our 8oz. old time bottles of Coke and it was nothing other than a dream come true.

On an unrelated note, the Mississippi River is quite high this year.