18.04.15

morning run:
Gracie
Blue
Godzilla
Truman
Rita
Tuesday
Frankie
Jack
Monkey
Luna
MoMo
Murci
(12)

To the beach at Au Soleil Couchant: ~7k. The dogs were really wound up last night; maybe it was because Julie and P-O left yesterday, who knows, but Roni and I were definitely lacking in the sleep dept. this morning. This is my official excuse for not noticing that two dogs snuck onto this run at the last second: Luna and Frankie. I had already decided to take ten (Blue was tenth dog and is never any trouble) but I didn't notice that Frankie and Luna were loose in the yard when I was wrangling everyone. Since Luna looks so much like Jack and Frankie looks so much like Gracie it all got balled up in my mind at the gate; I wanted to get going quickly before they were too wound up so I just threw the gate open and we took off... it wasn't until I rounded the first corner that I noticed I had two dogs that looked like Jack and two dogs that looked like Gracie in front of me. Ah, well. All of these dogs are experienced and well-behaved so even though I wasn't thrilled at the epic scale of the outing at first, by the time we got to the shrimpery I figured it would be alright. The idea was to not go on a really long one, since Tuesday doesn't like that, so I took us to the swimming hole (in name only now) and then the beach. Everyone thought this was a grand idea, had a real blast the whole way and swam like lunatics in the ocean. The one thing I forgot (and which I forgot to mention in a previous post) was the the dead sheep that someone dumped just east of the main road heading away from the tortuga sign, in the flat area where people frequently dump garbage. I wish they wouldn't do that in general but a sheep's corpse is just beyond the pale. The last time we went by there I didn't have so many hairy dogs that like to roll in filth, but this time I did and they did and it was disgusting and required baths when we got home. I will have to remember that for a while because it's not a small corpse and will take some time to disintegrate... maybe I'll head up there in the jeep and give the poor thing a decent burial. I put Murci on the other end of the leash with Tuesday before the blue.bag trail because she was still too fired up and was leading Luna and Mo off on little sorties into the underbrush; Tuesday suffered this indignity with more grace than she usually does (I apologized to her repeatedly). With so many dogs coming home (and not enough leashes) Luna darted down to the beach at the very end, but I was kind of expecting it and she came back before I could even get to the pink shack to yell for her. I did find it more stressful than normal to have so many dogs along but they were all good and had a great time.
GRADE: A