28.12.15

morning walk:
Alice
Ginger
Gracie
Osita
Ernie
Molly
Maggie
Ziggy
Stella
(9)

This was a disaster, mainly due to Gracie. Someone keeps a herd of goats to the south and east of us, in the monte before the first charco. They are not particularly careful and leave their herd of goats unattended for long periods of time. Sometimes they all show up at our house or very near it. Sometimes they're nowhere to be seen. This morning they were all in their enclosure (which they can easily leave on their own), almost a kilometer from our house, but that didn't stop Gracie for making a bee-line there and harassing them at the start of the walk. I don't know what possessed her. The goats have been there for a while and she hadn't done this on prior walks, but today for some reason that was her plan and it crapped all over this walk. The vast majority of the other dogs on this walk were very good, even the ones you might expect would be bad (Ernie, Osita, Ginger); they stuck with me through the whole ordeal, didn't harass any goats and let me focus on getting my hands on Gracie before she did any harm, which I managed to do. Unfortunately this came at the cost of Stella slipping her collar, at which point she just ran off and screwed around. I could tell from her attitude that she had turned her ears off so I focussed on rounding everyone up and wrangling us all back home. I tried to work in a bit of a walk anyway, thinking Stella would find her way back to me by the time we were coming home, but no dice: she screwed around the entire day, obviously close by, until finally we insisted she come back in when we saw her just a couple lots north on the beach. The outcome from this: more confirmation that Stella cannot be trusted, and now Gracie must also be on the leash when we leave.
GRADE: F