ALONG THE WAY

along the way How Canines Survive the DOG DAYS OF A DESERT SUMMER

RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY SAYS "DOG days" means a sultry part of summer associated with Sirius, the Dog Star, which rises at the same time as the sun from July 3 to August 11. "Dog days" for my wife, Vicki, and me means dealing with earthbound dogs 365 days a year. From about mid-May through October, protracted dog days prevail here in Phoenix and the Sonoran Desert. Perhaps more interest-ing, down the household orga-nization chart, our dogs have dog "dog days."

Our dogs are: Buppy, a half-sized German shepherd mix, rescued as a pup from a Dumpster; Thunny, a greyhound liberated from the pound, who wears the formal racetrack moniker of Rolling Thunder; and Butte, a Border collie-lab mix who came to dinner and never left.

When the summer monsoons cause the newspaper to drape around your hands like a wet towel, the dogs prefer ice cubes to Alpo; Butte and Buppy, in particu-lar, are addicted to midday ice cubes.

This time of year, our four-legged trio generally parks horizontally and refrains from moving. Contri-buting to this situation, the head of the household keeps promising "next year we get a real air-conditioner."

Until then we lower temperatures with what is called an "evaporative cooler" by people who sell them, and a "swamp cooler" by people who buy them. When the humidity hits 50 percent, you assist the cooler's output by stripping down naked and tying a 50-pound block of ice to your back. But the swamp cooler represents a big step up from hanging wet sheets over open windows, as they used to during the summer in Phoenix.

Dog days find Thunny living belly-up on the couch, where she catches the best flow from the cooler; Butte falls down in front of the high-speed supplemental fan, adding dog hair to my iced tea; Buppy hides somewhere difficult to find, somewhere dark, which she seems to asso-ciate with cool. Except for rare occasions, there are only three times the dogs will brave Phoenix daytime summer heat on their own. One, when nature calls; two, when Vicki or I go out to water the bougainvillea; and three, when the trash truck sails through the alley dragging its usual cloud of dust. Dog departure through the back door for Butte and Buppy means hurtling out. But our 45-mile-per-hour couch potato, Thunny, after what appears to be profound thought, turns 180 degrees, points her long rattail toward the open door then backs out into the heat.

Despite Thunny's unique entry into Phoenix summer outdoors, she takes sunbaths, her nearly hairless underside angled toward the blazing sun. Ask drugstore clerks what kind of sunscreen works best for greyhounds and expect them to humor you or break out in hysterical laughter. One said, "Well, it takes about 10 years to get skin cancer. How old is your dog?"

We bought one of those kids' wading pools and parked it under the grapefruit tree for the dogs to cool off in on days we're forced to leave them outside. Buppy ignores it, spending dog dog days in the survival cave she has excavated under our storeroom. Butte, sort of a Disneytype shaggy dog, hops into the pool and sits there cooling only the parts he feels necessary. Thunny turns into Cleopatra in the pool - shoulder-deep, regal, aloof. She comes out of it dripping and electric. Every time. Though she has never even seen a racetrack, she zips around the yard at racetrack speed. At the sight of this juggernaut, Butte tries to keep the mulberry tree between him and her. Buppy, though pack leader, dives into the safety of her cave.

Buppy, a loner indoors, likes company outside and craftily gets it. I follow her to the door. Butte and Thunny go with us. When the blast of hot air hits us, Butte and Thunny seem to wince and say, "Nuts to this." So Buppy goes back inside and picks up Butte's ball - he is a ball junkie and rushes past him. Butte says no way that ball is going anywhere without him. And there's no way a three-digit reading on the thermometer is going to stop him. So Buppy has her company, but once outside, she spits out the ball with an immediate couldn't-care-less attitude. Thunny ambles wearily back to the couch.

Buppy is presently on vacation in the White Mountains. With her gone, I have been nominated pack leader. It's August outside, and I prefer to spend most of August inside. Butte and Thunny, comatose in their favorite flows of cooler air, are not about to argue with me. All