01.10.12

morning walk:
Lucy
Shirley
April
Maggie
Bosha
Petey
(6)

I took this group for a walk around the cow pasture but ended up going to the tortuga crossroads via the cut-over because of April. She is simply never to be off the leash outside of truck.dog duty, certainly not on walks or runs. Even though she is somewhat fixed on me as her person when it comes to chasing marmots, birds, imaginary creatures only she can see, etc... she just turns her ears off and that's that. She was halfway around the other side of the charco just south of the alt.land bridge before I could get there and was continuing south like a lunatic; this pulled us all across while I finally got her to listen and turn around, at which point we had drifted over onto the cut-over where Petey was chasing butterfly shadows. I had let Shirley off the leash to put April on and she was even further north so I decided to just head north and get us all together by which point we were almost to the tortuga road anyway. This made the total distance for this walk over 3k which is more than I really wanted for Lucy at the least; I tried to not go too fast and watched her and she seemed okay afterwards (she was happy about it at the time). In the end we came home with April and Shirley on either ends of one leash and Bosha on the other; I wanted to let Bosha off but she was too freaked out by all the goings on and the strange route so I just played it safe. Petey was the best of the bunch - he listened to me and didn't get carried along by April's insane enthusiasm. A frustrating and undisciplined walk in high heat.
GRADE: C