Wet Play Break

Magical morning, had a feel of childhood dog walks, relaxed and happy in a beautiful place, usually hard to replicate in everyday life. I'm working at Crufts this weekend so I thought we all deserved to let our hair down and have a good hour long off lead walk. Realised as I was setting out from the car park that going mid week is probably a really good idea, so you don't meet tons of families in white cotton trousers who squeal at the sight of a dog grinning happily and dribbling slobber down their pristine 'walking' gear.

So rather than have a forced march around the lake I decided to let them play when we got to the first pools, no ball throwing, no commands, cues or demands just sniffing, splashing and exploring. We had a soggy, wet play break and walked past our normal way stop, the bench with the view, later in the walk to make up time. Turned into a 90 minute walk instead but it was worth it. Only met a couple of people on the way back who were very chilled and also had their dogs off lead.

Sad to hear on the way back on the car radio about possible legislation supposedly to deal with dangerous dogs. The numbers of incidents a year are actually very small and there are other ways of dealing with them rather than a sledge hammer insurance requirement.

Very often the dogs that cause the problems have missed out on their early socialisation, left their mum too early, been raised by people who think that being a dog owner is about dominating their dog. Fear is the usual cause of aggression in both people and dogs and puppy farms produce more than their fair share of frightened, aggressive dogs. Enforcing existing laws and yet more work with the general public about training their dogs and dealing with fear before it becomes a problem would save many dogs from being put down and help prevent the rare tragedy. Sorry for the rant but the news was so far from the reality of my fantasy walk it was hard to ignore.