Today the neighbour (same yard, different house) had two women and their (7?) year olds in the yard when Syn, Stitch, Spider, and I came out our front door to go on our daily run. The people were hidden by several trucks and cars and I didn’t know they were there until after we’d done a wonderful exit – sits in the front hall, stays while the door opened, dogs moved from the hall to the front step on invitation by name and then all three sat again facing the house. So far so good.
After that it could have gone All Wrong. As soon as I stepped onto the front walk, Syn and Spider went spinning off around the trucks and I heard squealing and yelling, and then a large man-Schnauzery yelp. Coming around the corner I see two moms, each with a kid in arms with their legs wrapped around their moms’ waists. Syn is looking a little bewildered and Spider is hiding behind one of the moms. One of the feral cats is stalking grandly away from the scene.
Turns out that Spider and Syn were both very happy to see the people – apparently being in the yard is OK when being in the house wasn’t. Spider went barrelling up to the kids, who jumped up to safety. Thwarted in his desire to tell everybody how much he loved them, Spider accidentally ran over the cat, who let him know the correct protocol (resulting in the manly yelp) for talking to wild cats.
So no one was hurt (except maybe a stripe of Spider’s nose). Lucky. My fault completely. It is NEVER OK to let a 46 pound dog, whether cheerful or not, land on unsuspecting people and I’ll be much more careful in future.
After I got the dogs out of the yard, I remembered what I wrote a couple of days ago – Spider doesn’t eat random stuff! I KNEW I shouldn’t have said anything. Now he eats EVERYTHING. Sticks. Pinecones. The TV remote. A fence post. Remember that deer pelvis he was ignoring last week? Today he found the other femur and he was smarter this time. I had to give Syn and Stitch each three treats before Spider decided to join us for his share. So we went on our way and… cattail stalks. Tree branches. Innocent little tree sprouts. He went over half a kilometre with a dirt clod in his mouth. Sigh.