18.10.15

morning run:
George
Otto
Shirley
Maggie
Twiggy
MoMo
Cookie
Zoila
Junebug
(9)

Up the beach and back a twisted way: ~7k. This started out as a short puppy training run and ended up being quite a bit longer due mainly to the actions of a few irritating salt workers. We left heading north towards the shack and took the short-cut to the beach around the charcos, which are now filling up from rain. We didn't see or hear any salt workers anywhere heading out. Zoila and June were really good and had a good time with the rest of the group. George and Maggie were lagging a little bit on the way back but I didn't think it was a big deal. We were almost home, on the last stretch of the road heading south from the shack before the dead goat intersection when we saw a truck of salt workers heading towards us. Neither Zoila nor June were too thrilled about this, as I suspected they would be. I thought I wrangled things pretty well by leading us all down onto the shore of the charco to get around them but one of the salt workers insisted on walking down and blocking our paths, freaking Zoila out a bit; worse, he acted as though he somehow couldn't understand Spanish and simply stood there like a lump with his mouth hanging open after I asked him several times to please move back a bit. Finally it became obvious that he would not move without a fight and I had bigger problems, as Zoila now wanted to head the other direction. I decided there was no dealing with the people so I turned us around to head back to the blue bag trail. George had alread moved ahead and obviously didn't want to turn around and go all the way back, as he had already been lagging and wanted to get home, so I left him to go home himself (he knows the way) and concentrated on the rest of the group. I thought Maggie might go with George but she wanted to stay with me, even though she had already been lagging... she was a real trooper on the way home. We ended up going all the way back to the cut-over and the ridge, and came home via the land bridge - almost double the distance I had intended. I tried Zoila on the leash a little near the end but there was really no point - we were all tired and wanted to get home. The pups had a lot of fun but I won't be taking them both out like this together for a while until they get better on leashes. Nobody really misbehaved, we just got screwed over by some very uncooperative people.
GRADE: B