13.09.11

morning run:
Henry
Alice
Lucy
George
Chester
Gowron
Lily
Linda
(8)

To the beach at Au Soleil Couchant and home via the tortuga sign and the monte: ~5k. This was a funny group. It was Linda's first time out and she did well. When we got to the three-way intersection at the Au Soleil Couchant road I heard a moto coming west, which is the direction we were going to go; I put Lily on the hook just to be sure and waited for it to pass. It was a moto-taxi with what looked like Mexican tourists. After they passed by I saw that Linda was running away from them in the direction of the beach - she is obviously averse to vehicles, which is generally a good thing. In this case, however, it was a pain in the ass, as the driver of the taxi was typically and stupidly oblivious to both the little dog obviously running away from him in fear and me sprinting to catch him with seven dogs in tow not 100m behind (and gaining). I don't know how you can be so utterly oblivious to your surroundings - I was yelling for Linda and for him to stop the whole way and he certainly must've heard me. Finally we spilled out onto doce where he turned south. Linda did as well but found a place to get off the road and hide. She wasn't terribly traumatized, just tired and a little freaked out. I collected her from the bushes and got us back on track down to the beach, where she showed herself to be a class-A water dog: she jumped into the water and swam almost immediately, came out to get me and obviously enjoyed swimming. By the time we got to the tortuga sign all was well again and she ran home in the middle of the pack. Everyone else was stellar, including Lucy and Alice, who kept up and had a great time.
GRADE: A