Heart Like a Dog

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

Follow-Up Friday

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For those new to the blog, my follow-up Friday provides me with an opportunity to update or revise a post from the previous week.

You know sometimes you post about something and you need an update but it doesn’t warrant a whole blog.  Or sometimes someone made a comment that really resonated with you.  Yup, Follow-Up Friday baby! :-)

Yahoo – Author’s Note

As you know Delilah is a work in progress.  As well as she did on her recalls last Saturday, yesterday she didn’t do as well.

I met my walking pal after work for a quick twenty-minute walk and we let the dogs run around in the field.  In the blink of an eye Delilah was gone.  I’m always concerned when she runs through the woods that her leash will get caught somewhere and she will strangle herself.   Normally she stops when she feels a strain on the leash, but you just never know.

My friend had seen Delilah enter the woods, so we attempted to follow her.  Thankfully I had the foresight to put their reflective vests on because it was snowing, and my friend easily spotted Delilah.  She was in someone’s back yard grazing on God knows what.

Even though I had been calling her from a distance she was preoccupied with what she was doing.  When I got close enough I called her again and she looked up.  As soon as she saw me she came running.

Our twenty-minute walk turned into forty. 🙂  As we were wrapping it up the dogs saw or heard something, I had Delilah’s leash at that point but when Sampson and Brady took off at a full run, I dropped the leash.  That was my bad.  I should never have done it considering how she had taken off earlier.

Sampson and Brady came right back but someone else was MIA.  It was close on 6 o’clock and I was freaking out a little because it was starting to get dark and I did not want to try to search for her at night.

We started walking down the hill towards the field which is the direction she was headed and I somehow found the sense to scream Wooo Hoooo, well that did it and she came tearing back to me.  But I can tell you I will probably not be giving her that kind of freedom again any time soon.

What Would You Call Him – Author’s Note

Many of you left comments indicating your cats do similar if not the same things.  That makes me feel better. 🙂

While this is mostly a blog about dogs, I did write a story about Bob last year that I thought was pretty amusing.  If you’d like to read it you can find it here.  I will have to warn you, I did use the “F” word in that post.

Dog Responsibility – Author’s Note

So as I related just a few minutes ago, we went up to the park last night.  After Delilah took off for the second time we headed home.  As we approached the field Sampson  paused and when I looked I could see there was someone in the field with their dogs.

I couldn’t tell if the dogs were leashed or not, so I just headed out.  The dogs were off leash and they came running down the path.  One of the dogs was a yellow lab and the other looked like a Springer Spaniel.

I exchanged quick hellos with their dad and then he headed up the hill and I headed out of the park.  The little Springer followed me….all the way out of the park.  In fact, I think (s)he was contemplating getting into my car.  The dad had kept walking.

It was full-blown dusk at this point and I was a little freaked out for the poor dog, but didn’t want to drag my guys back into the woods, so I cracked a window and locked the car and headed back towards the field.  The dog followed me.

I walked far enough in, encouraging the dog to go “find your dad,” and at last the dog headed off up the hill.

But again I was left stunned at the irresponsibility of this guy.  He literally just walked off and left his dog.  Alone.  In a park where there are coyotes and fishers.  I hope the little dog made it back without any issues.

I don’t know how we are going to get people to understand that owning a dog includes responsibility, especially to the dog!!

That’s it, I ‘m done now.  Looking forward to the weekend and some nice long walks with the dog.  We hope you enjoy yours.

Book Update: My book has 17,746 words.

 

 

 

Dog Responsibility

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Yesterday I wrote about our snowy walk in the woods, but there was something that I didn’t write about.

We ran into a woman who walks a pack of dogs up there frequently.  Her name is Brenda and she always has six dogs with her, which of them are hers I really don’t know, because she takes other people’s dogs for walks too.

She almost always has another person and their dogs with her as well.  Yesterday she had a lady who had at least three of her own dogs.

The ladies and their dogs were getting ready to leave so I took the my dogs up the hill just so there weren’t three sets of dogs attempting to get into three different cars.

Alas, when we headed back down the ladies were still loading their cars.

Sampson and Delilah jumped in the car, Brenda finished loading hers and drove off, but the other lady just stood there.  Waiting.

She said, two of her dogs had run off, but they would come back and that they did this all the time.

She told me where she thought they were and said they made her wait because they knew she wouldn’t leave them.  I suggested that maybe it was time for her to leave them and offered to stay and wait if she wanted to drive down the street.

She got in her car and slowly started driving down the street,  I called “Here puppies” and whistled.  Nothing.

I walked over to the side of the road and looked between the two houses where she thought they had gone and didn’t see them.

Meanwhile the woman had turned around and come back, and she told me that they usually didn’t make her wait longer than five minutes.

Sure enough as we were driving down the street I saw the two dogs running from an entirely different direction than where she thought they were.

The incident disturbed me for a couple of reasons, one being that her dogs were running on other people’s property and two that she has no control over her dogs and worse yet, she’s not even trying to control them.

I’ve seen this issue raised on other people’s blogs on a variety of topics but my question is, how do we educate people about being a responsible dog owner?  Or just being responsible around dogs?

Book update:  My book has 17,339 words.

Snow Fall

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It started snowing here late this morning.  I figured by the time I got home from work the snow might be too deep, so I decided to go home on lunch and give the dogs a half hour walk.

I have to say walking in the woods with the dogs during a snow fall rates in my top ten favorite things to do.

I love how the only sounds I hear are the squeaking of the snow under my boots and the jingle of the dog’s tags clinking against their collars as they run.

They stop.  Ears up, listening.  Then noses to the ground, they are off and running again.

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