Maya's homecoming hike, with Bonnie

The first thing I saw on my phone this morning was a Facebook memory from nine years ago announcing that we had found Maya and had her back home after her one month adventure in the wilds of Fluvanna County. Here's the blog post I did that evening:  Lost and Found. She was back home, in heat, and she fell in love with Trooper. Thank goodness we got her back before she fell in with a bad crowd of intact dogs. She loved Trooper till the day he died, and I expect she loves him still. Now she just has me but she's pretty bonded to me now too. We assumed Maya was about a year of age when we got her, making her 10 years old now. But her muzzle was beginning to gray in those early pictures, so she may have been more like two years old then, making her more like 11 years old now. Yikes. 

We celebrated the anniversary of Maya's return, and possibly her 10th or 11th birthday, with a three mile hike this afternoon. I think it was the first time we've walked with Bonnie. It certainly felt like it. She didn't pull particularly hard, but she was all over the place, giving my arms and back a workout and a lot of stretching as I was handling her leash. Maya was modeling perfect walking behavior as always, but it was completely lost on the puppy. She tried to play with Maya, she tried to play with both leashes, and she had the unfortunate inclination to stop directly in front of me as I was walking. We had a few issues. After two miles she was better, but then a biker came by with a dog. 

Bonnie has been exercising her voice quite a bit lately and she certainly did today. She sang along with the radio on the drive out there. She barked at everything she saw that was new, and that was pretty much everything. Sign posts along the road were scary, orange traffic cones were considered armed and dangerous, recently cut tree trunks required barking, and sometimes it was just barking at the empty space in front of her -- prophylactic barking, just in case anything was there. But when the biker and the dog came by, she knew that was something truly worthy of barking and she gave it her best. I had seen them coming and got myself and the dogs about 15 feet off of the trail. Fortunately the biker's dog stayed with him and didn't react to Bonnie's terrifying bark. Later a runner passed us on the trail and she launched into another round of barking. 

Bonnie is simultaneously fearful and fearless. She's wary of the unknown but she is ready to take it on at the same time. She has just discovered that she has a bark, and indeed she has a big one. She's not sure what to do with it yet so she just barks at everything new.

This was pretty terrifying, but she checked it out after giving it a few good barks.

Puppies never seem to realize all that they can and should learn from Maya.

Here you can see quite a bit of fallen tree debris

 that has been cleaned up to make the trail passable.

A good three mile route.