03.02.11

morning run:
Shirley
George
Blue
Rita
Frankie
Maggie
Ziggy
Stella
(8)

A collection of oddlings, as usual, under Shirley's enthusiastic leadership. We did 7-8k via a southern route, coming home via the land bridge. It was a little hot to start out with, so George got the lion's share of the water; by the time we were coming home it was starting to cloud over a bit, which made it easier. Ziggy has decided that he cannot resist the clarion call of the waterfowl, and insisted on chasing ducks even when I told him not to, so he was on the leash for most of the run. I hope this is just a phase. Everyone else was good and had a good time. Once again I must point out what a good girl Stella is on runs. She had a blast jumping around like a lunatic in the charcos, but was never out of control and always listened to me when I called her.
GRADE: A

morning sprint:
Floyd
(1)

I had planned on taking Floyd on the run, but he seems to have an issue with George now, which is disturbing. Frequently it is the case that dogs who have issues with each other get along better on a run, and it can even get them used to each other, but in Floyd's case I'm sure discretion is the better part of valor... you just can't be sure how he's going to react because of the combination of his bad eyesight and the fact that he had obviously never had any discipline whatsoever before he landed up with us. Thus, I took him out on his own about 20min after we got back from the run. The bugs are still pretty irritating around the cow pasture, and I was still in running togs, so I decided to do a quick 2k run with him, more or less as fast as he wanted to go: out the dirty road to the dead goat intersection and back the usual way. I did make him sit a few times to drink or just to make him do something. There were a large group of cows on the road right behind the cow pasture, who decided to run away from us in the direction we were going, so in effect we were doing a little cowboy duty, Floyd and I... that's right, I said "cowboy."
GRADE: A