Walking wild beasts

I took the paws out for an evening walk after eating dinner.  I must say that I think I should get a gold or silver medal every time I come back from a walk with those wild beasts without incidents occurring.  Walking two large dogs (one is 90 lbs, the other is 80 lbs) is like trying to harnass a 50 mph wind gust.  Their energy just can’t be contained.  Yellow dog, the older one, is usually easy as pie to walk.  She’s 6 and she’s had her fun.  She doesn’t mind going at a slower pace now.  But the chocolate one, oh, he’s just plain squirrely.  We had him in puppy training and he learned quite well all of the different commands … except for heel.  And quite frankly, I think that’s one of the hardest things to teach a dog.  The trainer’s theory/method was to stop him every time the leash got tight.  And then begin walking again and as long the leash was loose, we would praise him.  But then stop the minute he started to pull.  Being a puppy, we didn’t get very far on those practice walks or even around the neighborhood.  We would have to stop about every .78 seconds.  Eventually, we’d just lose patience and just walk him however we could manage but basically, he never learned b/c we didn’t follow up or work harder.  I take full responsibility for that bad trait.  The trainer said they are trying to be leaders of their packs so you have to let them know you are the leader.  Needless to say, I’m not quite feeling like the pack leader.

On top of which, my cute precious chocolate dog who loves to cuddle and give me sweet puppy kisses, manages to let out these gutteral growls (kind of like Cujo) when seeing other dogs in the neighborhood.  He’s not being aggressive and I know this because he plays well with other dogs at daycare and at friends houses.  He’s a very social puppy.  But tonight, as we were walking, both of the wild beasts started barking and pulling every time they encountered dogs on the street.  After the second time, I thought I might eat the asphalt and they would just trample over me trying to go say hi to the other dogs.

I reigned them in with my scary exorcist mommy voice that scares Obi-Wan, and would most certainly scare small children, saying “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.”  I yanked them back to my side and managed to push forward on the walk.  As we began progressing again, I just kept praying silently “no more f*&king neighorbood dogs tonight please.  I might not make it back alive.”  I was just exhausted at this point and we hadn’t even reached the halfway point, but I couldn’t deal with any more dog encounters this evening. 

Eventually, we turned around and headed home, passed a few dogs barking in their yards, which of course required more gutteral evil barking by the beasts, and finally arrived home.  My sanity was a little worse for the wear, but I made it back. 

So, I feel completely justified in wanting a gold medal after walking these beasts.  I envy those who have small dogs or just large dogs that actually behave quite nicely and enjoy the casual pace of a nice evening walk.  It’s not to be for me and my beasts.

[As a side note, I put this post under "Things that suck about deployment" among others because if Obi-Wan were here, I wouldn't have this problem.]