Well I'm feeling a lot better today. Scout and I headed out for a long walk. She's been really cooped up in the apartment lately and that results in her behaving like an absolute brat, so it was definitely time to take her out.
We went to the park as usual and were trotting along nicely when we came upon a group of small children wearing identical red hats. They were clearly a preschool or kindergarten class and were SO CUTE! Scout, on the other hand, didn't think so. She got this terrified look on her face and planted her paws. Scout's not really a big fan of the just-potty-trained set. Little kids tend to run to her screaming and want to pet her not so gently and it scares her. Luckily none of the kids seemed that impressed with Scout and none tried to approach her. I dragged walked her past them and all was well.
And I saw a rare sight--a German dog doing something wrong. German dogs are impeccably trained (this may be part of the reason why we don't see any beagles--they're hard to train) and most walk around without a leash and stay quite close to their owners and always follow voice commands. Well on the way to the park we were waiting at a stop light when a loose Husky appeared on the opposite side of the street and bounded across the street with nary a glance to either side to come over and sniff Scout. Fortunately it was a very small side street so there were no cars. The owner soon followed and the dog got lead back across the street by the collar and made to sit and stay until the owner gave the command to cross again. Don't worry, there was no abuse involved, just teaching a lesson. Scout immediately demonstrated her grasp of the situation by attempting to dart directly into traffic at the next intersection. She's normally pretty good at crosswalks but for some reason that all goes out the door if we're either across the street from the park or if there's a grassy island in the median. For some reason the grassy island renders this not a regular street so the normal rules don't apply. I don't know. Anyway, I had her sit at the crosswalk and wait and that worked well.
Posted by Shelby at May 14, 2004 02:25 PM