Canine bits and pieces

Good Saturday morning all; as I sit here blogging the sun is just peeking over the trees and the birds are chirping. The pooches are surrounding me as usual; this is my view while I blog every morning. This is my creative spot; I can write other places but for some reason this is where it works best. We've had our early morning snack and soon it will be out for our walk. Yesterday morning I took Tilley out with Luke to one of our favorite parks. This was only her second time there since January; sometimes there are other dogs in attendance off leash and Tilley cannot withstand any body slamming so we have to time it right. And we did; we were met by Luke's best friend, another standard poodle. One who looks quite a bit like Tilley actually.

We had made it halfway around the park when they pulled up; Luke didn't see her at first so I told him she was here. He turned abruptly, scanned the park and charged like a fool across the field. Watching them greet each other is something to see; in fact I'm hoping to capture it in the next couple of weeks for you all to see. After their exhuberant greeting she comes over and greets Tilley. Tilley is not the touchy feely type so when she is on the receiving end of lavish hugs and kisses she just lifts her head and accepts it. Sort of like "okay, if you really have to."

Before my poodle walk yesterday I had Jessie out for a sniff session of her own. She is all about the smells; we don't get that far having to sniff every piece of grass up and down but she has fun. As we made our way back to the park two women came down the path; they froze when they saw us and took a different path in the road. I too had to go that way and when they saw me coming I heard one say "oh no she's coming this way." They got as much distance as they could and waited for us to pass; they looked as uncomfortable as anyone could. So I shouted to them "not friendly?" One of the woman yelled "no; we were hoping to get good vibes from you." I said they weren't going to get that from my girl and we continued our walk.

These dogs weren't displaying; nothing. In fact they barely looked at us as we walked by. Definitely workable but nothing was going to change by running away. These type of issues have to be dealt with systematically as I wrote previously on leash aggression.

Well; off on our walk, have a great weekend.