Trying to get Tobie some exercise…

Nothing much going on around the Secret Lair over the past few days, just minor chores and getting myself into some sort of shape for summer. Since there’s still nothing really worth talking about but I’m aware of having neglected the blog, I brought the camera along on a morning walkie.

Spent part of the weekend working on “just what breed of dog is Tobie, anyway?” Early on, I assumed he was an Anatolian mix. Lately I’m starting to wonder if he isn’t a purebred ASD. Longtime readers might recall what a homely adolescent Little Bear was. Very much a Heinz 57 mutt, LB seemed to grow unevenly in different directions at different times. But Tobie’s growth has been much more…together. Having looked at a hundred pictures of pedigreed ASDs, I just don’t see any way he looks different from that. The only way he doesn’t match the mold is that Anatolians are supposed to be suspicious of strangers, but he loves to meet new people. Maybe standoffishness is a mature trait? I don’t know.

When I and Neighbor L encountered him at that shelter eleven months ago, he struck me as a puppy who’d been well cared for but who had recently experienced something very unpleasant. He wasn’t at all keen to make new friends and was lay-down-and-piss-himself terrified of getting into a car or truck – but other than that he didn’t in any way come across as feral or damaged. And – once he decided I wasn’t going to be another circle of hell – he was very rambunctious and adventurous. He really wanted to go exploring on his own.

Which caused me to develop a sort of scenario of the events that led him to that loud, unpleasant concrete cage. I strongly suspect that he regarded his “rescue” as more of a kidnapping. The lady at the shelter said he was turned in by two people who claimed he was ‘a stray,’ and that was all she knew. I can picture him being in a pedigreed litter, somehow getting free of his safe yard with his safe family to go on a Grand Adventure, and innocently pissing off some asshole – knowing Tobie, probably by digging up a flower bed – who bundled him into a car and delivered him to a shelter far from Mama and his siblings.

Which is why I’ve said a hundred times – tag your frickin’ dog*.

Anyway – somebody’s loss was my gain, and in any case I set out to talk about walkie time.

I like to mix up the route to keep us both interested. Whatever his breed, Tobie is a big puppy and needs more exercise than the old one-legged guy can realistically give him, so I try to make best use of the time.

And when Tobie gets out to the wash, what he really wants to do is run. Just run. And if he ever matures to the point where I trust him to have a good run and then come back, I’ll be inclined to let him do that. I’d really like to get him off the leash, but he’s not ready. Too many temptations. He’s already big enough that I’m not worried about predators hurting him but there are plenty of other things that could. Remember Porcupine Dog? Because I do.

Okay, so he can’t run as much as he’d certainly like. But there’s no rule says he can’t dig.

And dig, he will.

Oh, dig dig dig. Sometimes he digs veritable trenches to nowhere.

Until he decides he’s done…

And then it’s time to head home, for a treat and a drink and Nappy Time.

A lot of times he looks like a mature dog but he’s still very much a puppy. All the experts say I have at least another year before he squares away and starts acting mature. In the meantime I try to learn from my mistakes raising Little Bear, so that he can have more independence when he’s old enough to use it with some level of safety.

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*Someone at this point will bring up microchips, too. Yeah, okay: That would probably work better in an urban setting with a vet on every other corner than it would here. But your average Moe has no way of even detecting, let alone reading, a microchip. Tags are cheap and easily visible.