28.04.15

morning run:
Truman
Rufus
Elewah
Lily
Jack
Mega
Lex
Tori
Roxy
(9)

Hidden trail: ~8k. I tried to be clever wrangling this group and failed completely, leading to chaos and way too much noise at the gate before we left; also, this wasn't quite the group I wanted to take so a couple dogs got screwed out of a run. I thought I saw an opportunity to get Mega, Lex, Steve and, most importantly, Petey into the launchpad in one fell swoop when nobody was paying attention; sadly the speed at which information travels in dog.space is a lot greater than the speed at which I can react. I ended up with the above group in the launchpad and raring to go well before Roni and I had everyone else wrangled... won't do that again. We left with Rufus on the hook as always and headed north immediately this time to avoid any salt workers close by. I let Rufus off once we were heading north towards the wooden shack / blue.bag trail and he was really good the whole way. I took us north from the tortuga crossroads on that strange little trail that goes through what I think of as a cow pasture (because there's frequently a lot of cow shit there); clearly neither cows nor humans have been there in a very long time because it was so overgrown I took two wrong turns at first before I realized that Mega actually remembered the right way somehow. He's amazing for that: he always seems to remember the trail, even if we haven't been there for a while. I smacked my left foot into a nice-sized cactus hidden below the grass and ended up with a decent spine shoved under calluses and broken off at the base for the rest of the run... all my fault. Once we managed to beat our way out of that mess it got easier. The hidden trail is starting to get beaten down a little and I've finally memorized the spot where I must dip my head if I don't want to take a cactus limb to the forehead... it only took four runs or so. Everyone had a blast on the beach and the dead sheep wasn't too awful (although, like Generalissimo Franco, still dead). I let Roxy have her head when we were far from people but had her on the hook well before we came off of the beach. We ran into a couple of kids hanging out quietly under a tree as we were coming home south on the blue.bag trail; everyone ran over to say "hi" and Lily barked a bit but they all came back quickly over my assurances to the lads that the dogs didn't bite... they seemed to enjoy my little crew, who were awfully cute. I had Rufus on the black leash and Roxy on the long one coming home but sadly Mega, Truman, Jack and Elewah spoiled things by charging north on our road at the very end to go bark at some dogs near the soldiers we've been hearing from every night lately... no harm, no foul, but still I should have Truman and/or Jack on the leash coming home when they're together. It was incredibly humid and already pretty hot by the time we were coming home.
GRADE: B (too much barking/yelling at the end)

morning swim:
Greta
(1)

Good girl Greta.
GRADE: A