Sunday we tried to take Silas some new places. He didn’t like them.
The first reject was a linear park in a neighborhood a few north of ours. My husband tried to take him there while I grabbed a grocery or two, but no dice. Apparently he walked about twenty feet and then tried to bolt back to the car, through traffic. Oops. The linear park was too close to the street.
The second one was a different part of one of the usual parks. This is a more popular running trail. Non-Silas dogs love to run with their people here, and my husband has ambitions toward making Silas his running buddy. We made two mistakes here: first, we tried it on a beautiful weekend day, and secondly we started at the wrong place. The section of path we chose was, it turned out, not far enough from the road, and Silas was scared to death.
The second park at least has some hope. Silas was pretty content to stay in one place. He didn’t try to bolt. He met a Standard Poodle and seemed pretty happy about that. He just wasn’t that interested in actually walking. I think that if I start on a quiet weekday, on a different section of the path, we might do okay.
In the meantime, Silas prefers the other half of the park.
We went to that side and played some compensatory Frisbee. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Poodles can make excellent non-threatening guides to the worlds of doggie fun.
Sounds like the third time was almost the charm!
Poor Silas. We’re lucky in that we have trails and parks that we can visit with no people and no traffic so Forest isn’t faced with scary things. Keep trying Silas!