The last week has been great fun when walking the dogs. Devisri*** has been telling me for a while now to get adventurous. That dogs don’t just need physical exercise, a walk should also be mental exercise.
But me being me, I’ve been putting it off for a while now, there is always some excuse, some reason for not doing it. The dogs will get dirty, they’ll pick up ticks and fleas, I’m tired, they don’t walk properly, they don’t listen,… the list goes on.
Then last week something twisted in my brain and I decided to just take off. I just did it with out thinking, I started out on my usual route with Max and then suddenly I just felt like doing something different. You should have seen Max’s face with I diverted. :D
But once we set off Max had a ball, there was no more tugging and pulling on the leash. No more shooting off with no warning. We suddenly became a team on an exploration with uncharted waters to navigate.
We live in a layout outside the city. At this point in time the layout is great as it is huge and mostly empty. Spanning 15 odd streets on both sides of a main street with at the most a couple of houses in each street, the layout is a mesh of trails.
Lots of trees, wild grass, birds, and small animals makes this place a treasure trove of smells. I hadn’t realised this in all this time, and all I had to do to unlock this world was to get off the beaten path.
And once I did that last week, it was tremendous fun. The dogs were all suddenly looking at me to see where I would turn off, where I would go, where I would stop. And I was having so much fun watching them figure things out, letting them choose which way we would go, and what pace we would set.
There was no tugging anymore, at least not much of the unreasonable ones. We were walking together, sometimes the dog ahead and sometimes me. They weren’t dragging me anymore. They were smelling and marking along the way and smelling each other too when they returned to know where they had been.
Above all else I've been coming home refreshed, recharged and invigourated for having discovered something new everyday. It's been a discovery and adventure both inside and out.
Boy, oh boy, it’s been awesome (even if that's my much abused word) and it’s a new week full of more routes to explore this week!
***Devisri is a professional dog behaviourist and warden of my pack. You can connect with her at Urban Dawg.
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