I guess my wishes that Ayla would behave herself this morning were a bit delusional. It’s almost 7:30 am now and normally I would take her for a walk at about 7:45 which is about an hour after she eats breakfast. But a few minutes ago, she came to me here at the table and sat down, looking at her collar next to me and seemingly asking if we could go for a walk already. Since she doesn’t seem to be going number two in the yard anymore, I assumed that she may ready to get rid of her breakfast and therefore assumed we could go for the walk early.
So I put on her collar and her leash, put on my shoes and jacket and out the door we went. We have still not figured out how to break her habit of jumping around and pulling on the leash like a maniac when we walk down our street. She rarely does it anywhere but on that street and two blocks of half dragging the dog along there with your neighbors just waking up is not exactly my ideal thing to be doing at 7:30 am.
I decided we would try the short stretch of street which leads to a small corridor between houses which then goes into the fields. She tends to do a bit better on this stretch. But this morning, she apparently just wanted to play instead of actually go for a walk. We got out to the street and she was already tugging and jumping around like a maniac. Recently, I’ve just let the leash go and kept walking and she usually follows along. But I guess since one of our neighbors was outside, getting ready to leave for work, she decided it would be way more fun to run around and play keep away from mommy. Let’s just say I was not amused. So once the neighbor had driven off and I was pretty sure she wouldn’t run in front of a car, I just walked back to the house. She was bouncing around in front of me most of the way, darting into the neighbor’s yard at one point but never getting close enough for me to actually grab or step on her leash. She eventually frolicked her way back into our front yard and after I stood there looking very unamused at her, she came and stood in front of me. I put her in the backyard after that and here we sit now. I will try again with the walk in about 15 minutes but if she starts up again, we may not make it very far.
I really hope this is not a sign of what is to come the rest of the day…I have far too much to get done and I don’t really want to force her to stay in her kennel while I run errands.
