06.09.11

morning run:
Otto*
Archie
Chester
Truman
Rufus
Ernie
Elewah*
Jack
Stella**
(9)

We didn't all go at once and nobody went very far. I started with the first eight and it was going well until I noticed that Otto was lagging on the coco trail heading out. He had come up lame in his left rear leg for some reason. I looked him over and gave him a few meters to shake it off but it was not getting any better; it looked like perhaps he pulled it or twisted it somehow in that first 300m. When I realized Otto could not go I called the lead dogs back (Elewah, Jack) and we circled around the cow pasture to go home and drop Otto off. Everyone did pretty well at this; there were some strays hanging out at one of the small outbuildings at the shrimpery who barked at us as we ran back west next to the cow pasture and everyone was good about it. I scooped Elewah up when we got close because I didn't want her to go off and screw around while I was trying to deal with things. When we got back there was some general confusion, as we had only left a few minutes before. Otto and Elewah ended up going in and Stella came out so I (stupidly) thought "what the hell" and threw her in instead of Elewah, bringing the count down to seven for our second attempt. This turned out to be a bad idea as she began misbehaving almost immediately; she obviously smelled those strays and pulled everyone down in that direction to go bark at them. It was getting hot and I had pretty much already decided that this was not going to be a normal run but that sealed it. I put Stella on the hook for the rest of the run and took us just to the tortuga sign and back after all of that screwing around: a total of ~5k after all was said and done. It was pretty out and we saw nobody other than stray dogs and lizards so I decided to call it some kind of win. It wasn't the run I was hoping for but at least most of the dogs were good about the strangeness. We're watching Otto - so far no swelling or any other signs of something major.
GRADE: A