Puppy walks, puppy tricks
What to keep track of during a walk with your dog
The glass. Every blue moon, my mother will bring this story up again. At this point, I cover my eyes and think, “Is she ever going to forgive herself? It happened in 1988!” The answer: No. And if I were my mother, I can’t say I wouldn’t feel the same way.
She was walking our Labrador mix puppy, who was being particularly stubborn about walking that day. Sometimes he just wanted to stop and sniff. Other times, he wanted to be nosey and look at something behind him. But on this one day, she had had enough of the stopping and starting. She pulled on him a bit. And then she saw his paw was bloody, and he yelped. It turns out he’d walked over some glass. She freaked out and blamed herself, carrying him all the way home.
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More than three decades later, she’s still paranoid about walking dogs, especially puppies. My dog stops and starts all the time, and 99.9% of the time it’s just to investigate something random in the grass—usually dead, wild animals or another dog across the street. While I don’t freak out nearly as much as my mother when our dogs abruptly stop walking, I am always on glass alert when I pass a sidewalk—sometimes walking my dog on another side of the street and other times just scooping her up into one arm for a few steps to plop her down again.
The glass incident did teach us both a valuable lesson though. It’s better to investigate each time than to assume. Because the one time you assume it’s nothing, it’s something.
While that would be nice, my dog thinks her butt is made of gold and sugar. She’s not going for it.