Dog Walking...

 Keeping track of more than one dog.

As small as my two charges are ( an aging Maltese & a youthful French bulldog ) they do have their spurts of power and there are times when the two leashes clash and tangle. 

How do the professional dog walkers, those with a minimum of five dogs, manage a walk? Dogs do have their different needs and interests, sniffing and leaving individual scents, never mind the all important taking care of business so it boggles my mind how on earth one can manage five dogs on a leash at a time. But obviously one can. 

It rained this morning and I wondered whether their would be joyous participation or mutinous stop and go action. Yes, the older one has moments where he literally lies down with a grin, daring me to carry on. Cute indeed but short of me picking him up to carry him the rest of the way, only encouraging words do the trick. It was hot though when he did it, so I do understand and perhaps should invest in a dog carry pouch!

Anyway, today they both were good as gold and trotted happily alongside me most of the time. The other times one would stop and smell his roses while the other would pull ahead to find her places to leave her mark. Didn't bode well for me and my handling of both leashes. I can't tell you how often my arms were crossed over and if I hadn't skipped ropes, would have tripped over them. There surely must be a trick to handling them concurrently but it still hasn't revealed itself to me.

We encountered one other dog walker and luckily he is most of the time equipped with dog treats. Well known in the Deutsch Schützen canine community, he was a sight for my two dogs' sore eyes...Gosh, they ran like crazy toward him and almost knocked him over with enthusiastic attempts at jumping for their treats. He didn't disappoint and gave them each two. Amazing what power a treat can have...for a moment they doffed the mantle of their age and raced ahead like two young pups. Cute and sweet and surely the reason why dogs brighten one's day.

Biggi