Foggy morning walk

Baby Dog enjoys her morning sightings of deer, which happens nearly every morning.  Still, no matter how close they are, they are not as exciting to her as a rabbit. This morning we nearly walked up to a small, young deer. It stood and watched us as we approached.  It twitched its tail but didn’t seem inclined to move.  When we finally got too close it bounded away, but not too far, stopping to look at us yet again.

Baby Dog saw the deer and watched it carefully.  Her ears were up.  When the deer eventually went into the woods, she watched it go and we kept walking.  And then she saw the rabbit, which was further away than the deer, and that’s when she nearly pulled my arm out of its socket.  This is the reason why I don’t let her off lead.  As long as we didn’t see anything, she would stay right with me.  If we saw a deer, she would probably stay with me, but I’d need to tell her to stay.  With a rabbit, I would have no chance.  She’d be gone before she heard me say a word, and who knows where she’d end up?

She forgets everything I’ve taught her when she sees a rabbit.  Baby Dog is a mix-breed dog, which is the polite way of saying she’s a mutt.  I know she’s part Chow-Chow because she has a black tongue and the one photo I have of her mother looks like she might be half-Chow.  What her other parts are is a mystery.  I’m guessing those parts must have some kind of rabbit-chasing dog in them, perhaps a spaniel or a small setter.

She is coming up on her eighth birthday, which never ceases to surprise me, as I still think of her as young dog without a lot of sense. She definitely doesn’t have a lot of sense, but she certainly no longer qualifies as a young dog.  She’s a sweet thing, most of the time, though she does think of herself as the house cop in charge of cats.  Whenever a cat is bad, she’s right there to agree and sometimes to punish. People who’ve never seen her in punishment mode can’t believe she has that streak in her.

This morning the fog made our early-morning walk darker than usual.  Still, I know the time when I will need my headlamp when we leave the cabin on our walks can’t be far away.