Dobby Will Not Hike

On Sunday mornings, I try to change up the routine by taking Dobby for a hike in the woods behind the house. I prefer this because I don’t have to clean up his poop, and I also don’t feel obligated to be going any pace—it’s mental and physical exercise for him but is a day off for me. The problem is that Dobby thinks every day should be his walk, and he does not approve of derivations of the routine. We even have a special hiking leash, and he knows the difference between hike and walk. I told him several times we were going for a hike. I put his hiking leash on, opened the door, and he flew out like a shot up the driveway. But I pulled back and redirected him toward the side of the house.

Before we could even turn the corner, Dobby turned around and tried to get me back to the house. I pulled him along, so he grudgingly followed, but when we hit the first patch of snow on the grass, he acted as though it were lava and headed straight back to the house. “But Gordon, maybe he doesn’t like cold paws.” Ha ha ha, you fool. He’s fine with cold paws if he’s chasing his soccer ball across the snow or if he’s at the Striar Conversation area ripping along through the woods and trying to find the dead deer near the wetlands. Cold paws have nothing to do with it, though I’m sure he would try to sell you otherwise.

We managed to get onto the trail, and early in the trail system is a trail split. Rather than pick a direction he picked the one that “goes back to the house.” So I had to yank him along again. Fifty meters away we encountered the fallen log and the little gully on the other side. Obviously, even though a new trail has been cut around these obstacles, they were too much and it was time to go back. In his mind, anyway. I pulled him along regardless. When we started the exit from the woods and into the open area under the power lines, he was certain it was now time to head back, so he tried to do a loop around me. Only after he lost that battle did he surrender the initiative and go walking along with me.

We followed the power lines to Thompson Street and turned around. Partway back makes a mile from the house, and I thought perhaps we might stay away from the opening to the woods and keep going along the lines toward the cranberry bogs on Firefly Lane, but alas, I had not truly overcome his irritation with our break in routine. As soon as we approached the woods opening, he headed straight for it, and since it was close to when I needed to be back to get ready for Church, I surrendered. In the end, we hiked 1.38 miles, which is considerably shorter than the 2.2 we usually walk and much, much shorter than the days when we add a 3+ mile run to that. So later in the day, I took him for another hike at the Striar Conservation area, which is like Disney World to him—so many smells and sites, even though those woods are part of the same woods system as those behind our house. Don’t ask me.

That wiped him out, and he had to do some serious sleeping because he was up against a new threat. We finally got our fireplace converted to wood burning (it used to be propane, but it was always broken . . . always). We started our first fire that he has ever seen, and the result was predictable.

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