Yesterday was my day to stay home....my one weekend day that I didn't need to go into town. This has been going on for weeks, the one day weekends, and frankly, because my time is so short and so in demand, the dogs haven't been getting their weekly runs in the woods. I go out in the unfenced part of the yard with them every nite after work and play a good game of fetch, but between hunting seasons and the situation with my Mom, there just haven't been enough hours for us to get them out into the woods. So yesterday we just made it a priority and got them out.
Now, it's been a few weeks, and I expected some craziness. We got very little. Behind us is a huge field, surrounded by trees, and if we wander far enough through the pines, we find other open fields. I left their 50 foot drag lines on simply because it's been awhile, and there are snow mobiles tresspassing on this land and my guys have never encountered one up close and personal. Those machines SCREAM. I needed have bothered.
We walked through the little stand of trees on the side of the house, and headed for the open field. The snow is deep, up past my knees and I have LONG legs (32 inch inseam on a 5'4" maybe 5" body) so we opted to stay in the snow mobile path around the field. I said one time, "lets stay on the path" and no one veered from it. A couple times someone would try to go into the woods and a simple "eh eh" was all it took to pull them back onto the path.
I was really pleased with everyone. As always, they stayed within the length of the drag line, never getting more than 50 feet ahead of us before they would stop, without a word and either wait or turn around and come flying back to us. They seem to prefer the flying back to us since we're old and only have TWO legs and don't really want to walk quite as far as they can, especially in a snow storm....they seem to use that to get a bit of extra running. With the first group I picked up their lines once, and only as a preventative when a snow mobile started towards us....guess he saw people and three BIG dogs and thot again about tresspassing because he did a very quick u-turn and beat a hasty retreat.....and all the dogs did was watch. At one point with the second group, Thor stopped dead in his tracks and let out one bark. We saw nothing, but he must have. But, he made no effort to go further, despite the fact that he was free and easily could have. Just the one bark, and waiting for me to tell him what to do...either to release him to see what it was or call him back.
Each group got about a 4 mile walk, shorter than normal, but it was pretty tough getting through that snow and it was COLD. But despite the time since the last romp, despite the snow mobiles, despite my refusal to let them go into the woods as I usually do, they were just GOLDEN.
I'm one proud momma [
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