The autumn leaves have mostly fallen already. I’ve walked in the woods more this autumn then in the last 3-4 years. I’ve greatly enjoyed it. I made a series of small drawings I have called the #thedogwalkdrawings and posted them on Instagram. Fred has his own account called
https://www.instagram.com/the.redfred/ where I have recorded our autumn walks together.
And todays walk: well two things happened. I don’t normally meet that many people in the woods early in the morning (apart from other dog owners). But today I noticed a woman get out of her car with knee pads on! Mmm, a little unusual, she put a ruck sack on her back and carried a wicker basket on her arm. She was oriental I don’t know where from and seemed to be wearing many layers of clothing, more than most people. With her red plastic knee pads and pink patterned rucksack and wicker basket, she was looking unusual. She spoke English and explained she was collecting mushrooms, and showed me a tall slender mushroom which was at the bottom of her empty basket. She went onto explain that some people like me walk their dogs in their spare time, but she came to the woods to pick mushrooms in hers. Her car was stuffed with ‘stuff’ and I could feel she was reluctant to talk too freely. We said good bye and went in opposite directions.
I have noticed Fred responds to sounds better than voice commands, that’s clicks and whistles, so I have just started trying to get a little sharper on controlling him, as training has been a chore and slid off my agenda. I am not a very good dog trainer and have little consistency when it comes to calling Fred back to me. Sometimes I say ‘Here’ other times I say ‘Come’ and sometimes just call his name out. What chance does he stand with bad habits on my behalf like that? However, whistles and clicks I am having better results with. Which was fortuitous as we had an incident. I had had a very similar incident with my previous dog which did not go very well.
Fred was squirreling and I was just walking, enjoying the slip-slide of the mud and the autumn leaves, daydreaming no particular concerns and no real idea where Fred was. I whistled as I reached a T junction, I like to get him back so he knows which way I have gone. At this T junction is a stile and Fred has got under the stile and is inside what you might describe as a fenced enclosure, there are many of these in the woodlands. I can see him inside and he sees me then starts barking?
I realise he has started barking at the Conic Ponies, there are 4 of them. Fred’s very excited and barking his best. The ponies must operate at a different frequency altogether and remain totally unmoved by a medium/small ginger dog ‘going garrity’. Flash backs of stampedes caused by my previous dog rush into my mind. I whistle and wave, shout and jump about and to my amazement Fred does run under the stile and out to me. I run along the path and Fred follows me. Wow that worked a treat and I stop running. As soon as I stopped Fred turned around and dashed back to the stile and under and back in! Barking. I had to run back and get his attention again and make him come out. I thought it best not to go in myself. The ponies were moving about a bit this time and I felt more urgency to get him out of this. I whistled and ran again. He followed me and I definatly needed him on his lead and I said ‘sit’. He sat, I clicked the clicker thing gave him a treat and put his lead on. Happy days.
