Fun with Dogs!

I took two of my daily dogs and Jellybean for a walk around the path at Kirklevington Park today.  The last few times we’ve walked at Kirklevington I’ve had a dog other than a regular with me which has made the walk stressful in getting across the basic rules to the newcomer or dealing with Max’s pulling issues and I’ve been a bit embarrassed walking the dogs doing a little yelling, etc. rather than my usual dispensing of treats and praise.  Today was newcomer Hershey’s (a chocolate lab - of course ;-p) third park walk with me and he did just beautifully today, only crossing behind me a couple of times and quickly changing sides when given a gentle reminder of the No Changing Sides Behind Barrie commandment :-D

We had a very rare thing happen today:  we saw someone walking as many dogs as I do!  This also reminded me why everyone else loathes and detests flexi leads.  I walk all the dogs on flexis regularly but I reel the leash in when appropriate and I always call the dogs to me off the path to allow anyone else to pass us.

None of the dogs ever strain at the ends of their leads.  Any dog that does anything along those lines is not at all ready for a group walk and needs separate work - like Max.

We saw an older gentleman walking three smallish dogs together all on flexis with two of the dogs on a long coupler.  One dog was definitely a Jack Russell Terrier, I don’t know about the other two.  Okay, we pull a bit more than 12’ off the side of the path and all three of the largish dogs I am walking calmly sit by my side while this man allows his dogs to pull and strain off the path to get to my dogs.  Obviously they need more than 12 feet of space so again we walk a few feet further from the path with me talking happy nonsense to my dogs and they again sit calmly next to me while we wait for the other pack to pass us which has to be hard for dogs to do and I was out of treats since Hershey ate an entire bag of turkey while I was loading Butter into the car…ooops.

I am feeling back on top of things today which is a much, much better feeling than the stressed, harassed, embarrassed feeling I have had after the last few Kirklevington walks :-)