Who’s the Big Dog
Yesterday after I got home and as it was already dark out, I played some random living room trick games with the dogs and I played with all of them separately with the clicker to work on some new tricks. I’ve been doing this a couple of times a week for the past couple of weeks.
It’s fun and they enjoy it, as do I, but it’s no substitute for physical play. And much as the mental stuff works them, my dogs also need physical outlets.
I arrived home today from my daily dog walking visits with enough daylight to finally do something with the dogs outside. But one of my favorite places to take them to run around is a 20 to 30 minute drive in late day traffic and by the time we got there, it’d be dark within 30 minutes of arrival. Plus, I drive a lot as it is. I just didn’t feel like getting back in the driver’s seat and getting pissed off about the poor driving skills of many of my peers.
But my choices were limited by the fact that daylight passes so quickly this time of year. So I opted to take Youke and Rhys to Marymoor Park, which has a 40-acre dog park and is five miles from my house, and then to take Brady and Camm for a very rare walk about the neighborhood.
Brady and Camm went after dark had descended and did great passing all the commuter traffic returning for the day and the commotion of the downtown area. Despite the relative peace and quiet of my property, I only live a half-mile from a central shopping and downtown district. “Downtown” was an ironic paradox when I first moved here 18 years ago; now it is a reality, complete with irate busy shoppers and honking cars and SUVs, most of the high end luxury sort.
After leaving the relative quiet of my street, we turned toward the shopping center and braved the rushing traffic and bright headlights. My dogs do not get walked a lot on neighborhood and city streets, but Brady and Camm held it together, although I could tell they were both apprehensive. So I did what I always do and talked them through it, offering reassurances as to their bravery and commending them on their sniffing choices.
Brady hates buses and he especially hates UPS trucks, both of which are abundant at rush hour and during the holiday season. But despite seeing nasty city buses and the super evil UPS truck, he managed to hold it together, only quietly snapping his teeth at the UPS truck’s rear fender and silently glaring at the hideous bus. Camm just charged straight ahead, all business, until we finally finished climbing the big hill that makes up The Plateau and turned into the back end of our neighborhood. We then relaxed by looking at the neighbors’ pretty Christmas lights and peeing on things. Okay, that last part was mostly Brady.
Yay for me for now walking so many miles and hills that the big hill doesn’t even wind me any more. There was a time when I’d deliberately do this walk in the downhill direction. Now, I kinda relish the uphill part.
All said and done, after walking dogs and then taking my own dogs out and about, I logged 15.5 miles today. Not a bad day.
But the really awesome post-work stuff with my dogs was at Marymoor with Youke and Rhys.
Youke of course was his usual rock star self and wanted to mostly play Ball.
It quickly became apparent that Rhys is now officially grown up. His transformation into an adult border collie snob has been completed. He was not interested at all in the other dogs running, barking, chasing and leaping. He made excellent decisions about a few dogs that came on a bit strong even when he preferred to ignore them and agreed with me when I communicated that I thought we should avoid some of them altogether. He was completely focused on me and on doing something with me, and even when we went into the quiet muddy marshy middle that few others venture into and explored, he kept checking in between checking for critter trails
I rarely go to Marymoor as the dog park scene isn’t really my thing and it’s not a scene that my dogs really appreciate. Marymoor is nice as it’s so large and on a weekday during off peak hours it’s actually fairly decent. I hate it on weekends, holidays or mid-days, but at other times, I can often find a vacant corner to play Ball with my dogs or find some interesting critter odors.
Still, I rarely go with my adult dogs. My adult dogs do not care about socializing with others and quite frankly find much of the behavior of other dogs very rude. Still, it can be a bit of a fun party scene for an older puppy or teenage dog and Youke went there a fair bit as a youngster – although he truly was more into Ball than other dogs. I took Rhys there a few times a week after he turned a year old for much of one winter. I mainly wanted to expose him to all kinds of dogs of different shapes and sizes and personalities, although not necessarily to be friends with all of them. My goal was to make myself much more interesting and fun than an entire dog park full of dogs.
Rhys was fairly social and playful, and very curious, about other dogs for a while at that age.
Not gonna lie. I like that my border collies have some select dog friends, but that for the most part they’re pretty snotty about engaging in dog park shenanigans. In fact, they’re pretty snotty about who they consider friends. And as far as play with other dogs is concerned, they aren’t really having it.
Rhys showed today he has morphed into an adult border collie. He wanted nothing to do with the play of the other dogs there. He wasn’t even enticed by the running of the other dogs. He was friendly and polite, even a bit flirty, with a couple of young female dogs that came up to him, but he just wasn’t into playing with anyone. He’d offer a brief butt sniff or nose touch to polite dogs, and he quickly disengaged from the more forward and pushy dogs, but for the most part. he wanted to play a little Ball with me and Youke, sniff interesting smells and look to me for what direction we were going to head toward next.
My puppy grew up.
It was especially interesting as I’ve noticed he’s become a more serious dog in the past few months, but last weekend he met up with a dog he first met as a puppy. That dog, Ty, was actually his first true non-family adult dog friend. They recognized each other within 10 seconds of meeting in the big field behind the agility barn and started playing chase games. What was so very fun about this particular play is how loose and relaxed both dogs were and how the play was very much a give and take. Such a contrast to much of the play I witnessed at the dog park today, so much of which was frenzied, erratic and punctuated with shots of stressed energy.
Maybe I’ll even be so lucky as to have another perfect dog (most of the time).
Still mostly perfect
Still waters
YoBaCaRy 