Sometimes I have ESP.

Don’t get excited, it’s not the kind of ESP that predicts the outcome of sporting events or winning lottery numbers or anything. Truthfully, I’m not very good at recognizing it even as ESP and I definitely don’t know how to hone it in.

How it works is like this, I’m driving down the highway and all of a sudden I think, “Gee I haven’t seen a cop in a long time,” and then a mile down the road, there’s a cop shooting radar or writing a ticket to some poor soul that doesn’t have ESP.

OR

Sometimes it works like this, I write a blog post about a command I’m using called, “Stop!”

In the post I say, “There’s also another command we’ve been working on. It’s called Stop. I typically use this command when the dogs are both off-leash in the woods. Suddenly I will say, “Stop!” and reward them when they do. My thought process is this – to have a command so solid, the dogs will do it without even thinking. So now when that wayward deer shows up and my dog takes off, (and I panic forgetting my recall word) I yell, “Stop!” and my dog will cease what he/she’s doing and actually stop. Once I’ve gotten their attention, (and gathered my wits again) I can easily recall them back to me.”

My posts are scheduled to publish at midnight. So today’s post was actually written yesterday. I wrote my Stop Means Stop! post last Wednesday night and published it Thursday. Thursday afternoon I took the dogs for their afternoon walk in the woods. It was a fairly good walk, Delilah had been well behaved so I decided to let her off-leash for the last bit of trail walking.

She is jauntily walking along beside me looking adoringly up at me, when suddenly she stiffens up and Sampson does too. Then they quicken their pace down the hill.

I’m looking ahead, but I can’t see anything, so I say, “I don’t see anything”

Suddenly a Mama deer and her baby pop out of a side trail onto the main trail. Delilah’s already on it.

I keep my head about me and yell “Stop”. Delilah is in hot pursuit, ears flying tail wagging and running as if her life depends on it. She either can’t hear me OR she’s choosing to ignore me.

My brain engages, stop isn’t working so I yell, “Sampson, Delilah, NO!”

By now Sampson has realized that he in fact, cannot run down a deer, but Delilah, Delilah has not figured this out yet. She’s ready to give it the old Labrador try.

The deer however have figured out that a crazy, barking dog is chasing them, so they hightail it down the path. The deer hit the end of the main trail and head towards the main road, with Delilah right behind them. My brain then says, “Shit, if she leaves the park, it’s anybody’s guess where she’ll end up.”

Delilah hits the end of the path and something clicks. She has either decided that she cannot in fact, run down a deer or she finally hears, “Stop.” As quickly as she started running, she has stopped, and turned around, running happily back up to me.

I breathe a deep sigh of relief. I’ll take it as a win.

I just wish my ESP spelled things out. Like, put your dog’s leash on, there’s deer about to pop out at you.