Hello Everyone 🙂
I've just come back from a walk with my young fella, it was an on-lead walk. I had to fix his 'gentle-leader' {like a halter for dogs} as the last time I visited the Center of my Universe, he chewed through it! I replaced the chewed bit with chain and it works perfectly again 😄 I'd just gotten to feeling a bit more confident about taking him for off-lead walks along my little dirt road again {the d*ckhead neighbours that drove like the clappers have gone :)}, when, just a few days back, as we were doing just that . . . we discovered someone up the road has gotten goats! It was terribly exciting, I've got to tell you! . . the young fella had a ball! . . . . luckily {and strangly for out here} they were in a proper fence. But it still took ages before I could get his attention and get him away! I was hoping they'd be there again and this time we could go about it in a far more restrained manner; but they were nowhere to be seen {fancy that after having an American Staffordshire Terrier race around their paddock for 1/2 and hour or more!}.
We did get plenty of lessons in restraint though (gotta be one of the hardest lessons for the young :)), as we walked around our 'block' we came across a man on his 4 wheeler with 2 little dogs in the front basket, 2 cars and a motorbike drove past on the bitchumen road! 2 puddles on the side of the road with birds drinking from them and even a kangaroo!! Many times he just stopped and sat, I think these would have been the times he would have taken off into the bush, I stopped and looked in the direction that he was - but I couldn't see anything unusual, I think it's sounds that he heads for. I think he's pretty tuned in to the likes of a snap of a twig, the russling of grasses or leaves and the fact that often it's some kind of critter making those sounds happen.
When we got back to our little road I let him off as lead walks don't really even touch his energy exertion needs, but I do believe they are a great source of mental stimulation, that he wouldn't be able to have off lead. He immediately took off into the bush, again I saw nothing out of the usual, but we'd seen the kangaroo just before we'd gotten there - so maybe he was just hoping 🙂 He wasn't gone long, he's much better at returning, ever since I think he encountered a wild pig in the State Forest. We got back to the house just on tea time and now he's contentedly curled up on the recliner beside me. I don't take the little dog on lead walks with us, it's too hard, I want to be able to enjoy the walk and stimulation of sights too - not get tangled up, fall over and break a hip! 🙂 But he enjoyed his dinner as well (as did the cat) and is now curled up by my feet on the computer chair I use as a foot stool 🙂
It's starting to get a little cool and I'm thinking about lighting the fire, might think about my dinner too 🙂
Just felt like chatting - so I did 😄
