Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

Meet and Greet…(Day One Hundred and Twenty)

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What do you want your pet to do when you are walking or hiking and meet another person that does not have a dog?

What I want is for my dog to ignore that person unless they express an interest in meeting my dog.  The last thing I want (which happened to Chet on Sunday) is for my dog to go charging happily towards someone and jump at them.  Good thing Chet is a big guy, cause that chocolate lab could have really knocked him down and hurt him.

That being said, I would like to share two experiences that recently happened when we encountered “dogless” people.  The area we walk our dogs is owned by the town and has a small town garage on premises; as we were leaving the park we noticed that a man was at the garage removing some stored items.  Since we saw him well in advance, we called the dogs to us and leashed them.  Then we started to walk past;  Delilah got a little bit antsy, so Chet said walk on the other side of me, which we did.  I am here to tell you that if I could have picked my dog up and danced with her that is exactly what I would have done.  She was spot on perfect!  She walked slightly ahead of me, tail and head held high and never looked once at that man!  I wanted to buy her a filet mignon!   Exactly what I expect from her.

The other experience happened today; we met an older man on the trail, I saw him first so I called the dogs to me and made them sit as he approached.  I put one finger through each of their collars and told them to stay.  After the man had passed us, he stopped to inquire about the dogs, after a minute or so I let the dogs free and they ran on ahead completely ignoring him.  Of course, Sampson had to run back to the man and get a pat, but he did it very cautiously and respectfully; I couldn’t have asked for more.

New Horizons….Day One Hundred and Nineteen

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Today when we went to take our hike, there was a woman who was walking up to the park with her two dogs; the problem for me was that she was on her cell phone.  This is the third time we have encountered this woman and all three times, she was on her cell phone.  Don’t get me wrong, if I need to be on my cell phone when I am out, I will be; but for me it is more important that my dogs and the trails have my full attention.

We quickly got the dogs running into the park and huffed and puffed our way up the hill; we jumped on the orange trail and followed it completely around; whew what a workout.  The dogs did really well, at one point we could see two guys and a dog on the trail but they were some distance away, we stopped and made the dogs stop, and then I continued on towards our destination; Delilah immediately followed me, but Sampson was sorely tempted to go and greet the other dog.  Eventually he headed back onto the orange trail with us.

Then we got to the open field and there was a group of three people standing in the middle, naturally the dogs wanted to head that way and we tried to distract them, but the people were headed to our side of the field, and so it was inevitable the dogs went to greet the people.  This is something we will work on, because some people don’t like dogs (GASP!) and don’t like to encounter a dog charging at them on their walks!

Still it was a very enjoyable walk and the dogs got to check out some new places.

New Horizons

Practice what you preach…(Day One Hundred and Eighteen)

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Back a couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog about dogs and new experiences, today I had to practice what I preached.  We headed out on the trail after work and had just jumped off the main trail onto the orange trail; the dogs were racing ahead of me and I heard a strange noise behind me.  Naturally I turned, and saw two bicyclists heading down the way we had just come.  I figured we were safe. Wrong!  The bicyclists  turned onto the yellow trail and crossed directly in front of us on the orange trail! 

We’ve encountered bicyclists before on the rails to trails; which is more of a flat, well-worn trail; but it never even dawned on me that people might actually take their mountain bikes into the woods!  So I called the dogs to me and after a tense moment when I thought one or the other of them were going to take off after the bicycles; the bicyclists had passed.  I turned around and headed back the way we had come to try to make sure that we didn’t run into them again.  I diverted their attention by taking them on a new trail; where they had lots of new scents and places to explore.

I’m not really sure how I should prepare the dogs for encountering bicycles on the trail; but I need to pay attention and be aware of what goes on around me; I need to work on getting the dogs to return to me regardless of where we are or what they are doing. 

Investigating a new smell.

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