20.11.10

morning run:
Godzilla
Tuesday
Gowron
Frankie
Lily
Molly
(6)

Tuesday continued to give me problems, even though I tried a different approach this time. Instead of starting out with her on the leash and keeping tight control of her, I decided to try leaving with her off the leash, and just work with her as much as I could. Roni suggested I take one less dog than normal, and this turned out to be a good idea. For once I had a clear plan of exactly where I wanted to go before we left: out the dirty road to the intersection, through the shire and north to the hidden trail, down the beach to Au Soleil Couchant and home in the monte. We started out extremely well: everyone stayed with me and was listening. This is a fast group. Yesterday I felt like I hardly broke a sweat because the dogs were so all over the place, but this bunch just wanted to run, so we kicked ass all the way down the hidden trail to doce, which is where Tuesday got weird. Until that point she had done extremely well, had fun, and even drank from the bottle twice. For some reason, just after we crossed doce to pick up the trail to the beach Tuesday got that paranoid look and started hanging back, glaring at me suspiciously. I have no idea why. Things had been nothing but light and fun until that point, and we had just run a little over 5km at a flat out gallop, so you'd think she'd be a little tired, but instead she decided she didn't want to go any further, and turned around. I know I've had her out on that very trail before, so she knew we were already heading home anyway. She was not to be reasoned with, and insisted on heading back exactly the way we came, back up the hidden trail; my standard Doggie Psych 101 technique of ignoring her and moving on, expecting her to decide it's okay and catch up, was not going to work, so I got us all turned around and it was off to the races, only this time Tuesday wasn't with me, she was trying to beat me home. If I didn't have concerns about her chasing cars or doing other stupid things when out of my sight I might've just said to hell with it and let her go home alone; I did that with Archie once (a long time ago), but Archie doesn't have a history of acting like Tuesday when we're in the monte. In the end, we ended up tracking her (Lily is a good tracker), and caught her as she tried to ford the crossing right at the dead goat 3-way intersection. Amazing. I got her on the leash in the water, which was a little more contentious than I would've liked. I made a point of not losing my temper or demonstrating strong emotions, because I'm convinced that it is counter-productive in the end, so at least the last 1km home wasn't as much of a pain as it might've been in the past. Everyone else on the run was stellar.
GRADE: C