Della and Paisley

I hadn't taken Paisley out for a walk since her unfortunate run in with Della and Maya. But she's pretty much healed up now and I think has been getting bored. Today was a beautiful day -- blue sky, a little breeze, low humidity, and no rain! I took Della and Paisley up to the park for my daily walk. This story is going to get a little scary for dog people so I'm going to stop right here and tell everyone that there is a happy ending.

We went early afternoon because we had plans for the evening. There were very few people around, just a couple of parked cars that I presumed were people on their lunch break. The morning walkers were gone and it was too early for the late afternoon/early evening crowd. And of course, there were no baseball, softball, or soccer games going on during school hours. It was a great time to be out there and such a beautiful day. Paisley was obviously happy to be out and to be included, she was literally smiling from ear to ear. And she was looking at me without that look of fear and mistrust that she had for so long.

I didn't even consider doing the trails because I knew they would be too muddy. We just did the two mile walk on the road, one mile from the pole barn to the maintenance building and another mile back. Shortly past the halfway point the two girls both dropped behind me and were actually slowing me down. I gave their leashes a hard and sudden pull to get them moving a little faster, preferably out in front of me. Well, it worked with Della but in pulling them forward suddenly I pulled the harness off of Paisley entirely, setting her free to run about on her own.

I had an "oh fuck" moment, of course, but tried not to panic and really tried not to let any panic come through in my voice. I called her, she looked at me, but she wouldn't come to me. She took off ahead in the direction we were going but didn't run into the woods or the tall grass. I abandoned the road and began walking a straight line across the fields directly back towards my van. Although she wouldn't come to me, she did follow along. I was really glad that no one was around so there weren't any human or canine distractions. I tried stopping a couple of times to see if she would come to me, but of course she would not. I was encouraged, however, by the fact that she was more or less following us and not running off on her own.

Here's Paisley, off leash, about 25 yards ahead of us.

At this point I was just glad that she was still with us and heading towards the van.

As Della and I were approaching the pole barn where I had parked, I saw a group of three people with two leashed dogs heading towards us. I did not want to be that irresponsible person with an off leash dog who ran up to someone's leashed dogs. I also didn't want anyone to try to grab or hold Paisley. We headed around the opposite side of the house, towards the community garden, and therefore avoided any encounter. And again, Paisley was sticking with us, at a distance. 

As we finally approached my van, I unlocked and opened the side doors with my remote. Paisley went right up to the van and when I got there to open the crate, she hopped right in.

She had a great time and I guess I got a bit more of a cardio workout due to the panic factor and the faster pace I took getting back to the van.