Rodders and I headed off up the Nicky Line early this morning as the sun was shining. He was really good and came back when called and was happy running about and sniffing as we made our way to Keans Fields.
Once we turned around and headed home things didn't go quite so well. There was a family of four in front of us. Rodders would run up behind them and then stop and wait for me. He then got braver and got ahead of them a couple of times. The young boy seemed to be fascinated by Rodders and kept turning around to talk to me. He asked if he could stroke Rodders and I explained that he is only a puppy and still getting used to people and if he tried to approach him Rodders would probably come running back to me, sure enough he did!
Looking back I should probably have put Rodders back on his lead but I didn't. By the time we got to the bridge by the church Rodders was happily skipping ahead of us and I managed to overtake the family.
As we got near the steps to the Rugby Field I was calling Rodders back to me when the young boy shouted I'll get him for you and ran past me. I did ask him not to as Rodders would just run away from him and he said that it would be OK, he would get in front of him. Um, how do you expect to do that without chasing him? Grrrrr.
Sure enough Rodders was a bit spooked and ran off up the steps to the right, heading away from the Ruby Field, in to some garages out of my sight. The young boy stopped on the Nicky Line, probably spooked by the loud barking coming from the direction Rodders had gone in.
As soon as I could see up there I spotted two men with two Staffie type dogs. One of the men was holding both dogs, the other man was trying to keep Rodders away from them. I walked towards them and got Rodders to come to me so that I could put his lead back on and apologised and explained that he had a child running after him and wasn't paying attention to me. They were not impressed and said it is people like us that give their dogs a bad name, if Rodders hadn't been kept away he doesn't know what his older dog would have done. I apologised again and beat a hasty retreat and headed back towards home.
On the way back we stopped to talk to Lillian, one of my neighbours. She mentioned that Rodders seems to love going out with the dog walker but she was a bit concerned that he gets such a long walk for a little dog. She was happier once I explained that Sue picks up a lot of dogs, walks them for an hour, and then drops them all back home.
No comments:
Post a Comment