Heart Like a Dog

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

Whoops Where’s Delilah?

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I’m very spoiled by the area where I walk the dogs.  I mean minus the spider webs, how can you beat the beauty of the woods?

There’s something about the serenity of the woods that can’t help but bring peace to your soul.  When you add your two favorites pups to the beauty, well it’s like a double rainbow.

There’s one spot with a really large rock.  I’ve never really let the dogs explore the rock before partly because we’ve been so caught up in the beauty of our woods and partly because, well the dogs have never really shown any interest in it.

A few weeks ago I decided it would be a perfect place to take a picture and so I encouraged the dogs to climb to the top of the rock and wait while I framed a shot.

You want us to stay up here mom?

 

After I snapped this shot, I thought I should step back a bit farther, just so you could get a good idea of how high the rock actually is.    Without turning around I began moving backward.  That’s when my mountain goat Delilah decided I might be heading somewhere more interesting.

She actually ran about two feet down the rock and jumped the rest of the way!  You really can’t tell the height in the photo but if I were to guess, I’d say it’s at least 12 to 15 feet high.

Her daring never ceases to amaze me, as well as keep my heart beating fast!  Are there things your dogs do that make you gasp?

Welcome to the Monday Mischief Blog Hop hosted by Snoopy’s Dog Blog, Alfie’s Blog, Luna and Cinder and My Brown Newfies.

 

What Are The Odds?

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Are you a gambler? 

I’m not a very good one, although I do admit I love to play the slot machines whenever I get the opportunity. 

I’m a fairly predictable gambler though.  I put $20 in the machine and when the money is gone, I’m done.  If I happen to win, I cash out, put the original $20 back in the machine and play again.  

I don’t understand sports statistics, handicaps and how bookies figure out odds. 

I do know however, that if the Vegas bookies were hosting an event in my neck of the woods and they actually went as far as to bet on certain events happening on one of Sampson, Delilah and my walks, somebody, somewhere would be making money.

We’re a sure bet.

 

These results are based on a three-month period.  if you were a gambling person and had bet on one of these events, the payoff would have been something like this:

The odds that your dog squats to poop and you try to maneuver the leash so as not to get poop on it and during your manipulation, the leash swings across your dog’s butt just as that little brown friend pops its head out? 1 chance out of 90.

The odds that a spider having the option of building a web at any height between two forty (plus) foot trees, will build at face height, so it brushes across your mouth or face as you walk through it? 75 chances out of 90.

A dog who cannot cover her poop with dirt from twenty feet away, can manage to get dirt in your face, as you bend down to pick up that poop? 2 chances out of 90.

That the same dog, (still covering poop) can manage to get dirt anywhere on you or the other dog you are walking with? 6 chances out of 90.

Get your face out of there woman, I’m on a mission!

 

You bend down to wipe a leaf off your dog’s face and it’s really part of a spider web that sticks to your fingers and freaks you out? 1 chance out of 90.

Yes dear friends, all of the above have happened to me (some more frequently than others) on one of our recent walks.

If you were a betting soul and had bet on one of our walks, you’d be sitting pretty right now. 🙂

What types of things could you bet on during one of your walks?

My All Star is on the D.L. (Part 2)

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After he’d received the basic information that punkin would be okay, Hubby asked the all important question “So no walk today?”

To which I promptly responded, “No, he gets leash walks.”

He wasn’t getting off that easy.

Hubby doesn’t really want to walk the dogs, which is the reason that I’m the one doing most of the walking, but there are times when it just doesn’t fit into my schedule.  During those times I can usually convince him to a walk around the block.

But walks around the block don’t work well for me in terms of blogging.  They are monotonous, the same blah walk every night.

We go to the end of the driveway and take a right, we go up the hill and take another right going around the back of our house.

A car comes and the dogs have to sit.  The car goes by and we walk again.

We pass a house with a barking dog behind a fence, neither Sampson nor Delilah gives two figs about it.

Sampson stops and pees on a fire hydrant.

Delilah gets amped up when we approach the two dogs in the invisible fence.

Delilah takes a dump on somebody’s lawn, Daddy holds the leash and the flashlight while Mama picks up the poop.

We go home.

What the hell?   You can’t write a daily blog post about that stuff.

Tuesday night Sampson took his first dose of medication, and after dinner we saddled up and headed out. I noticed at about the half-way point Sampson had slowed down considerably.  Our normal 15 to 20 minute jaunt took us almost 1/2 an hour.

That really blew, so I started thinking about it, I mean Sampson’s the one on the D.L.  Delilah and I aren’t. Why should our exercise be confined to 20 minute walks around the neighborhood?

I told Hubby when weather and time permit, I will need him to take Sampson for a short walk, while Delilah and I head up to the trails.

Luckily for me, Hubby is on mandatory over-time for the next month, which means he does not go to his part-time job after work, which means he comes straight home.  Honestly it couldn’t have worked out better if I had planned it! (A quick thank you to the guy upstairs, I owe you one.)

Wednesday night I got home, changed my clothes and prepped Delilah for the walk, it was not easy looking at Sampson’s face wondering why he wasn’t included in our romp, but I pulled on my big girl panties, sucked it up and left his sweet face home with the Hubby.

We’d had a decent amount of wind on Tuesday evening and some more branches had come down.  This one was almost blocking the path completely, and I had to drop Delilah’s leash in order to move the branch.

You can see how much of the path was blocked.

 

I expected she would take off and I would spend the next half hour in a blind panic, tears streaming down my face as I searched the woods for her, but she came right back the instant I called her.

I decided to take her off-leash to see how she’d do.

She was amazing.  When she ran off into the deep woods she seemed to always have her eye on me and came right back when I called her.

Most of the time she stayed right with me, running off briefly to check on something and then coming promptly back.

At one point I noticed some white tails a distance ahead of us, so I called her to me and leashed her up.

As we were getting ready to head towards home and had just come out near one of our danger zones, I heard a lot of noise coming from a thicket.

Too bad I wasn’t quicker with my camera, a hawk or owl (I’m assuming hawk considering the time of day) flew out of the brush about 10 to 15 feet over Delilah’s head!  Thankfully she was totally focused on something on the ground and she didn’t see it.

You have to look very closely, I was trying not to scare him.

 

The hawk had its dinner in its claws and I took a picture of it sitting in the tree.  I tried to get closer to get a better picture, but the hawk flew off.  At that point Delilah KNEW something was up and she went on alert too.

I figured it’s always best to end your training successfully, so we headed home.

I commented to Hubby how well she did and we both agree it was because she was minus Sampson.

Why do you suppose that is?  Do you think it is a competition between her and him as to who will be the pack leader or do you think she feels since he isn’t there, she has to protect me?

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