15.10.13

morning beach outing:
Archie*
Rufus
Linda*
Amber*
Hazel
Tori
Murci*
(7)

Up the beach (almost) to the tortuga sign and back: ~3k. This was a slow-rolling disaster for many reasons. The main impetus was to get Rufus out for a run that would not leave him limping; the secondary objective was to get Zoot to go on any kind of an outing at all but we ditched that idea after 30min of finagling... So fine, in the end I had these seven in the beach-side yard, hooked up Rufus and took off. I brought Murci because I thought it would be good for her to go on a shorty with a few of her super-buddies (Hazel, Tori, Linda, Amber); she needs to get with the program and is getting big enough to go on short runs. Sadly we were waylaid immediately at the soldiers' by two of the dogs that hang out there; the soldier on duty at their palapa did make an attempt to hold one of them back but the other one charged down to the beach and started barking at us. Generally this is not an issue; all of our dogs know to just stay with their human and keep moving... all except the newbie, Murci. She decided to turn around and bark back at them (the soldier lost hold of the other one) and they were not impressed by the pupling; they bluff-charged her and she realized she was out-manned as her buddies were 20m up the beach from her, so she turned tail and ran home. If only I had brought a walkie-talkie with me I could've just told Roni what was up but I didn't and I wasn't sure of her reactions; furthermore Amber, whose natural skittishness worked against us here, decided that she also would turn tail and then the wheels fell off. I turned us all around to make sure Roni at least knew what was happening and that Murci didn't freak out and head farther south, etc. I should've known that she knows exactly where we live and really, really likes it here; she just bolted for the gate. Amber ran around the north road to the other gate, Linda got caught up in the xmul but eventually found her way to the beach gate and Archie arrived back late and went into the yard. That left me with Rufus, Hazel and Tori, and since the whole point was Rufus and those three have proven themselves I went north again. This time it went much better: we just kept moving and the dogs at the soldiers' didn't really bug us, nor we them. We went almost to the tortuga sign with plenty of swimming for Rufus. On the way back I left Rufus off the leash and had both Tori and Hazel on either end of it. It was a frustrating morning and a lot of sound and fury to go almost nowhere but at least Rufus was happy and tired.
GRADE: B