Don't be fooled by this first picture. This was at the end of a three mile hike/drag through the woods. In the beginning he was as bad or even worse than Fargo had been yesterday. He almost pulled out of the harness right near the start. I was very glad I had the slip lead around his neck as well, but he was choking himself so bad I had to ease up on that and use the harness as the primary control device.
It wasn't pretty in the beginning. In fact I turned back before we were too far along knowing that I couldn't pull the damn dog the entire route. But I decided I wasn't going to give up so easily, because I still needed the exercise. We went another route that would give me the option of taking a shortcut back if he continued to make it difficult on me.
He got slightly better, ever so slightly, the farther that we walked. Occasionally he'd spaz out again, run into the bushes off the trail or around the wrong side of a tree, but it was enough better overall that I kept going. Della wasn't as helpful as she could have been. She likes a slow walk anyway, with a lot of stops to sniff so she wasn't doing anything to encourage him to keep moving. I should have taken Elvis. At one point she dropped back behind me and walked next to or just in front of him, and that seemed to keep him moving better, probably because he was trying to sniff her and check her out.
It was slightly better than Fargo's hike, but I'm just as tired. Progress is slow. Sturgis goes in for surgery tomorrow.
The blue leash is on his harness, the grey one is around his neck.
Both are pretty tight here.
Della at Sparky's watering hole.
After Della showed him, he stuck his nose in and had a drink.
We were at about two miles here.
You can see that my left arm is behind me because I'm still pulling him along.
But I'm just pulling on the harness now, the grey slip lead is slack.
3.05 miles
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