Happy Friday — we’re back with more Hot Bones, but briefly.

Hope everyone is already enjoying the holiday weekend, staying cool, and doing their very best to fight the most noble fight of all … avoiding corn on the cob. Unless of course you enjoy the sensation of a squeaky ziploc bag across your teeth.

Corn haters, let’s do this.

Do one long thumb scroll for more Cville-specific updates like local events, cool houses, and pets to adopt.

🐶 Speaking of: Sabrina! Want an excuse to avoid your crazy family this Fourth of July? Adopt this sweet, shy pup instead, and hang out in a cool quiet place to protect her from the firework noises (yellow lab mix, 4 months old, 24 lbs).

🐱 Plus a mystery cat named Raven.

A few weeks ago, before I brought our dog, Frannie, to my parents for an extended Farm Camp visit, I panicked about the heat. She was about to run all over the place, all day, and the weather was going to get brutal. So I did what any well-meaning, foolish Millenial dog parent would do: I ordered a cooling mat from Instagram.

Feeling relieved, I continued packing and didn’t give it another thought.

So when I got to my parents’ place a few days later to drop off Frannie, I checked the mail and opened a mysterious package my name on it. A slippery, electric blue nappy slid out.

I flipped the box over and a shipping confirmation fell to my feet. Congrats, your dog cooling mat has arrived! This tiny thing? Crop tops are bigger.

It’s embarrassing when you buy the wrong size clothing for someone, it’s definitely embarrassing when you buy the wrong size clothing for someone’s baby, and it turns out it’s also embarrassing when you order the wrong size cooling mat for your dog.

Frannie trotted into the mudroom, looked at the midsize kerchief I held in front of her, and said with her eyes: “Wow I am so not that size. What are you implying there, boss?”

“Yeah my bad, Fran. Looks like I also ordered the wrong color.”

Frannie gives it another sniff, shows no further sign of interest or even gratitude at the lengths and costs I’ve gone to to ensure her internal organs don’t melt, and then trots off again to lick every corner of the kitchen floor.

“Ice silk summer comfort, Fran! I’ve been assured!”

Maybe Nixie will like it more. Nix is my parents’ dog, a five-year-old black lab who used to run away and roll in dead animals but now rolls in dead animals right in front of you.

“Nixie, come lie on this cooling mat. You’ll be more comfortable.”

Nixie sits way down the hall.

“Nixie, here.”

Nixie puts her head on the floor, digging her elbows into the floorboards.

“Nixie, no. Here.”

Hmmm.

I walk over to Nixie. I put the little blue towel down next to her.

“Nixie, get up just a little. Just move like two feet and lie on this.”

The path of passive resistance continues.

“Please, this was kinda expensive.”

“I’m.trying.to.help.you” I say as I roll 50 pounds of hot fur onto half the cooling blanket, flipping the other half around her like a taco.

“There! Cooler already! Look, Fran! Your cousin likes it!”

I turn around to see where Frannie is (butt skyward, head wedged under the dishwasher). And when I look back, Nixie has rolled out of frame into the darkness.

Just me and the mat now.

Not quite ready to admit full defeat, I lay the blankie on top of Frannie’s existing bed in the other room like a napkin on a subway bench and test it out with my hands. It feels a little cooler, a little silkier, a little closer to solving our rapidly heating planet thing. But not much.

Then I put my hands on the actual floor. Significantly cooler.

The next morning, before I left, I walked over to Frannie’s bed on the off-chance my impulse purchase wasn’t a complete waste of money. Cooling mats are supposed to be a really great way to help dogs draw heat away from their body, since they can only cool off by sweating through their feet pads and by panting.

Unfortunately, this particular cooling pad was scrunched in a corner of the room like a forgotten swimsuit in a pool parking lot.

And when I returned earlier this week after my trip to Nashville, I found the blanket in Frannie’s to-go bag. Even my parents had grown tired of looking at the thing, so they’d washed it (points for machine washability) and stuffed it out of sight.

When we take Frannie home in a few days, we’ll be testing it out in the car. Maybe that’ll be where the cooling mat shines.

But until then, we’re stuck in a triple-digit heat dome with two hot dogs who don’t really want to follow any of my preventative measures. If you also have a dog who runs your life, you may be experiencing something similar. You can lead them to water (to literal lakes, even) and they may choose to eat grass and roll in dead fish. You can wrap their paws in cool towels and they may instantly rip off those handcuffs. You can tell them to go pee outside real quick and they may opt to lie in the direct noon sunshine until their fur is on fire.

I’ve come to believe it may be less about the heat and more about willfully ignoring their owner, but maybe that’s just me. I’m a pushover who’ll give out Greenies until the bag is empty.

Be that as it may, all of this still runs counter to my understanding of how humans approach heat waves. We with thumbs are proactively seeking cooling solutions. Fans, AC, short pants, cold showers. Cooling centers (Cville and statewide). Ice cream, popsicles, big hats. Sleeping in the basement if you can get there before your siblings.

In fact, the perfect innovative corollary is what my friend did one summer after their AC broke. They filled empty Talenti gelato jars with water, froze them, and distributed them around their bed to stay cool all night. Talk about a cooling blanket.

I wonder if perhaps dogs like Fran and Nix are so annoyingly obstinate about all this because they haven’t been told the big, depressing stats like we have:

Bleak hot stuff to be taken seriously. Maybe it’s good the dogs don’t know.

The whole cooling mat fiasco started because I kept envisioning Frannie doing that terrible rapid panting thing, where her eyes get really big and scared and you want to both help her any way you can and also tell her “this is why I took you to the lake, to cool off, not so you could smell like alley trout.”

I’d guess that most folks who have pets have devised their own cooling systems by now, purely based on the quirks of their own creature. But in case you’re looking for a few more ideas, here are the only things that have so far worked for Fran and Nix during this heat dome.

And of course, there’s always the mud pit.

What’s worked for you and your pets? And can I give you my cooling mat?

Pinterest bringing it home. I’ll take the peaches and prosciutto option for this heat wave.

Cville has awesome run clubs, bike clubs, even river float clubs. Big fan of them all. But sometimes you need a highly specific adventure pal for that random afternoon you’re finally free, or someone to text who you just know will be down to try hot amphibian yoga with you (I’m not free whatever day that is).

I think a lot of the Hot Bones crew could use a network like this, but I want to check first.

🏙️ Festival of the week: Sure, Fourth of July. But also it’s the 50th anniversary of Cville’s downtown mall. There will be a super hot celebration all day today (July 3), with free ice cream, live music, a lantern parade, and more. Then a disco afterparty at Rapture starting after your bedtime.

🚲 Free bike money: The next batch of e-bike vouchers are cooked and ready for lucky Cville winners to claim. You can enter the drawing until July 31 for a chance to receive between $500 and $1,500 for an e-bike.

🏠 Mountain house of the week: Live your best A-frame life deep in the Blue Ridge. Incredible views, questionable amount of wood paneling (2 beds, 1 bath for $260k in Elkton).

🏡 Cool rental of the week: 1920s shingled cottage on one of the quietest streets in town, with an under-the-stairs reading nook, huge yard, and gravel driveway (3 beds, 2 baths for $2,300/month in Fry’s Spring).

🌳 Summer Fridays get even better: Morven Sustainability Lab is a huge, historic property just south of town that UVA runs mainly for its students. But their summer series opens the property to the community on select Fridays for hanging out, enjoying the gardens, possibly laptop work, definitely naps on picnic blankets. Free but register here.

📣 On your radar: Thanks to a new wage transparency law that went into effect this week in Virginia, the Hot Bones job postings will now be able to include salary listings all the time.

📦 Bonus: Another notable new law is that the styrofoam container ban for restaurants is now for real statewide, after a phased rollout in the past few years. (Styrofoam is nearly impossible to recycle and it isn’t biodegradable either, breaking down into microplastics instead.)

💚 Oh one more good piece of news: Virginia is rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which is a multi-state program to reduce power plant pollution. In the 3 years when VA was last in the initiative, state power plant emissions dropped 22%.

💼 Job of the week: Chief of Staff at Darden ($150k - $200k).

💾 Remote job: Director of Writing and Editing at Climate Power ($120k - $143k).

Have an event or rec you’d like to share? Hiring? Interested in advertising? Share any and all info here.