Posts Tagged ‘leash walk’
Accepting Frustration
The feeling of frustration happens when I can’t control situations in the direction I wish for them to go. I am not a dog trainer and rarely succeed in influencing our dog, Asher, to behave in a way that will be convenient for me and safe for him. I found myself in that miserable place yesterday because of a flock of wild turkeys and a growing weariness from two weeks of being the sole person feeding horses and walking the dog.
We currently have a lot of activity around us tempting the poor dog to stray beyond our property lines. Corn fields on two sides of our property are being harvested and Asher finds the big machines and guys frequently walking between tractors and trucks very fascinating. Soon there will be deer hunters out in numbers.
For that reason, I can’t let him roam loose on walks around the property. Unfortunately, being leashed doesn’t always stop him from getting away from me. The urgency with which he bolts into tight squeezes between trees at the sight of a squirrel jars me off my feet and forces me to let go of the leash to save myself.
Not letting go of the leash is how Cyndie ended up breaking her ankle with Delilah a year ago.
After a very long time of allowing Asher to follow his nose and explore the far reaches of our property at will yesterday (sniffari), we stopped in the barn to tend to the horses. While they were gobbling feed, I decided to walk Asher up to the house. Without warning, he pulled me off balance around the corner of the garage. He flew over the large rocks by the front door and disappeared around the outside of the sunroom. I let go as my feet hit the biggest rock, sailing over it and landing in the yard on my stomach like a humiliated Superman fallen from flight.
That’s when I noticed a lot of big birds taking flight for treetops in the neighboring woods. I could hear the leaves crunching under Ashers’ bounding leaps but I couldn’t see him. By the time I made it back on my feet, it was all quiet and Asher and the turkeys were nowhere in sight.
I wanted to just wait for him to return but he was dragging a leash and the odds were high that he was going to get hung up in a tangled mess. I heard one distant bark that sounded like it could be his, so I set off on a search and rescue mission.
With occasional calls and whistles, I climbed toward a high ridge seeking the widest view and ultimately a farm road around the next field over. Soon after making my way out of the woods, I spotted Asher just as I feared, with the leash caught on a branch, passing through a rusty barbed wire fence, and wrapped twice around a small tree trunk.
Struggling to get him to walk straight home with me, I was in no mood to fight off my simmering frustration.
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Autumn Walk
The ground has started to dry up after the most recent soaking and the sky slowly grew sunnier and sunnier yesterday afternoon making for a particularly picturesque leash-walk with Asher.
Warm, however, was not how the air temperature felt.
I have no confidence that Asher is able to associate being confined once again to the leash with his recent rash of unacceptable sprints across the road to disrupt things at our neighbors’ but it’s the only solution immediately available in our bag of tricks.
The challenge it creates for us is finding ways to burn off some of his big energy with games and exercises in the house. He got a little wound up in the house but he was amazingly tolerant of being tethered every time we went out.
I thought this flipped-over oak leaf with the deep puzzle-shaped recesses was particularly eye-catching. I didn’t recall ever noticing leaves with this shape on tree branches. A few minutes down the trail, boom! There’s a small oak with the same shape of leaves. Doh!
The trail in the woods offered more mystical nature specimens, especially this classically shaped toadstool.
Had me looking for a troll sneaking around in the trees nearby, especially the way Asher was sniffing the ground.
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Relative Something 