It was back to the river for some quick but nice walks the week before last when I was trying to get lots of work done before my fortnight off. But every walk counts, for Freya and me, not matter how short – for Freya just because she's a dog and needs walks, and for me because I've a few stone I need to get rid of and I have to step it up because I've been going the wrong way up the scales for a few years now and enough's enough!
You just can't lose down by the river near Carlisle bridge – if the tide's in, Freya gets a paddle, and if it's not, she gets to shlurp about in the mud. Winner winner!
And then I just think it's the cutest thing watching her bounce back to me through the long grass with her eyes closed so she's doesn't get them poked. (Sorry, this is a full-on Freya post! I know she's featured a lot since we got her, but this one is very Freya-indulgent. You might have guessed that from the title, of course.)
It was a lovely but uneventful walk, same as usual, with me throwing the ball and Freya finding it but not bringing it back to me. She at least does drop it on the path for me to go and fetch ... wait a minute, she's having me on! German shepherds – too clever by far! She does this all the time; I think I've trained her to do something, but she has other ideas and finds a loophole or a workaround and I end up being the mug doing things for her. Brilliant.
What I've not been able to do for ages is teach her how to jump up onto this big fallen tree. Mind you, not being all that supple, I have a job getting up on it myself, flailing about, and my legs are longer than hers, so it's no wonder she couldn't tell what I was trying to show her. But today she did it. She looked at the tree for a few seconds, took a couple of steps back and then leapt and landed perfectly right on top. No scrabbling about or falling off the other side. Easy. She explored the top of the tree for a bit. Jumped off and back on again, and then did her usual thing of snuggling up next to me for a cuddle and a rest. Smashing.
Hasn't she grown, eh? Not quite full size yet, but probably not far off. She's going to be one year old in a few weeks. I don't think those tips of her ears are going to be changing – I think they'd have pinged up by now if they were going to. It's fine – I have an eccentric-looking dog to match her eccentric-looking owner. All good.
See, proper eccentric. She thinks she's people.
Until tomorrow, patient friends who very kindly indulge me all the time in my witterings about my little dog,
Linda + Freya
Comments
Post a Comment