Coming Along (The Education of Groot, Part 3)

Groot is growing, and he's also growing up, a bit. He's gotten pretty good about the routines around here and he's good with the other dogs. I don't think we've made much progress toward using a crate just yet, but he will now hop into the crate in the van without too much resistance. Today I took him and Maya out walking together for the first time. It was good for both of them, I think. Certainly the exercise, the outing, and the activity was good for both of them and for me.

It was a bit like one of those wilderness youth camp experiences where they send delinquents to learn some discipline (Groot), and more privileged kids go to learn leadership skills (Maya). When we first started out he wanted to play with her rather than walk, but she set him straight on why we were out there. Maya tends to lag a bit when we walk, but with Groot along she was out front and leading the way most of the time. The two of them set a faster pace than either of them do individually, so it was a better workout for me too.

Handling two dogs on two leashes is always a bit of a challenge, but they were pretty good about avoiding entanglement.