Well we have a new dog in the crew named Jess.   She is a young black and white Border Collie who looks just like Sneug  just smaller.  I met her in the woods about a month ago while walking Dot and Rigby on a weekend and actually thought she was Sneug from a distance.

The next week Jess went on her very first group walk with us.  Both her owners and I had some concerns about her leaving her home and jumping in the dog-mobile with strange dogs and just how well would she fit into the group dynamic.  Believe it or not this has come up before (very rarely and usually it is the Australian Shepherd’s who are afraid to do the group walk thing).  Well it turns out that this is not an issue with Jess.  She acts like she has been walking with our gang her whole life.  Who knows maybe she had a dog walker in a previous life.

So today was Jess’s fourth week walking with us.  On her first 3 walks she had Eddie (1yr old Chocolate Lab who is the life of the party) to play with.  Jess and Eddie bonded instantly.  Every second week Jess and Sneug (both black Border Collie’s) get to walk together.  Sneug is also best friends with Eddie so when the three of them walked together the first time I was concerned there might be an odd man out but not so the three of them just ran and played and ran and played.

Eddie was not able to participate in the afternoon group walk today.  It turns out that Sneug and Jess just did not know how to play with each other with out him there.  It was strange.  They both wanted to play the same way…Border Collie style but couldn’t seem to connect.  Sneug’s Border Collie radar seemed to be misdirected and he kept trying to herd up and encourage high energy play with Susie a middle aged, short and squat yellow lab with arthritis who just can not play.

Jess on the other hand wanted to hang out with Nutmeg who is 14 and more or less had her bicep removed last year  so she is a bit slower than the rest of us.  Jess kept going back to check on her.

So lesson learned always walk Eddie and Jess together and next week I will add Wally the  Black Standard Poodle into the mix for some added exitement.

At the end of our walk when I went to return Jess to her home there was no way she was getting out of the dog-mobile.  She cuddled up with Sneug, Tess and Dot in the back and was not budging.  If I opened the side door she went to the back and if I opened the back door she went to the side.  In the end I had to get all the other dogs out of the car and crawl in and leash Jess and then pull her out.  I think she is telling me she loves the group walks and can she please, please, please stay in the car and go for another one.  A true Border Collie she can go all day long.

From Dogwalking, posted by Sheri Jay on 10/21/2010 (Showing 9 of 22 items)

“Dog walking”

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Today we enjoyed our first Ice Storm or Freezing Rain Storm of the winter.  It seems that some of the Plowmen (both private and municipal) were not quite ready to deal with it.  A number of roads had not had gravel dropped by 1pm making driving very scary and sketchy in some places.

I am usually well prepared for this kind of weather.  I wear Yak Trax (Shoe Traction Devices) on my boots.  I have a great telescoping pole for extra stability.  My car has  Bridegestone Blizzaks installed (the best snow tires out there  in my opinion ).  I drive an all wheel drive Honda Element which I call the snow tank which can handle some pretty extreme driving conditions.

What I am not equipped for though is driving on sheer ice.  Today I picked up my dogs for the first group walk of the day and then headed towards Tessa and Sneug’s house to begin our walk.  I had to drive up Circle des Erables to get to their house.  I made it up and over the first hill with no problem.   As I crested the hill and started heading down I realized the road had not had gravel dropped and it was sheer ice.

Sometimes visually it is deceiving with freezing rain because it looks like the gravel is on top of the ice when it is really below.  My car started sliding sideways  and I was thankful I was driving slowly and carefully so I could manage the descent without going off the road with 4 dogs on board.    We crept down the hill and made it safely to our walk destination.  In the end we did a 2 hour walk instead of a 1 hour walk because we had to wait for the gravel truck to come and drop gravel in order to get out so we might as well just keep walking.

It turns out everything just takes longer in bad weather.  Whether it is rain, freezing rain or a snowstorm the driving and walking just takes longer than on a nice sunny day.  Not to mention on the rain and freezing rain days each dog has to be cleaned off and dried before being deposited back into their homes.  But that is a whole other story.

Yesterday my parents beautiful little pussy cat Troja passed away in my father’s lap.  The story of how she came into their lives has become a favorite for my niece Jessica who likes to hear it over and over again.

Sixteen years ago I was visiting my parents in Prague in the Czech Republic.  We had a dinner reservation at a fancy restaurant and were all dressed up and rushing down the sidewalk in front of my parents house to catch the tram.  We were running late.  I suddenly heard the voice of a very little kitten just screaming.  I asked everyone to stop and we found a little, little kitten standing up against a wire fence crying.  My first instinct was to help the kitten who was obviously distressed.  The rest of the group didn’t think this was a good idea.  We had a dinner reservation that we were late for.  My boyfriend at the time told me “you can’t save all the stray cats in the world and you are in a foreign country”.  I do have a tendency to rescue stray cats and cats in trouble do seem to find their way to me.

So against my will we continued on to the tram stop where I started to cry and said “I can’t believe you think a dinner reservation is more important than a life”.  My mother then told my father that this was his fault for getting rid of some kittens we had when I was 4 years old and my sister was about to come into our lives.  So all of us turned around and went back to the distressed kitten who was still very distressed and stuck behind the wire fence.  Well it turned out that even though she was in trouble and very hungry it wasn’ t enough to allow her to trust us.  We tried and tried to catch her to no avail.

My mother finally had the great idea to go into their house which was right accross the street from the kitten and get a can of tuna.  She brought it out, we opened it and presto we caught the kitten.  We quickly took her into my parents house and set her up in a bathroom with food and kitty litter.

We were on our way to the tram once again and now really late for our dinner reservation.  I vaguely remember that it was a function with the Royal Danish Ballet troup in attendance at the restaurant.  Well we arrived late, missed the dancers but we still got to eat

My parents decided to keep the kitten and name ther Troja since they lived in the Troja district in Prague and their house was close to the Troja palace.  Troja was a feral kitten which there were so many of in Prague.  She was so tiny when we found her we thought she might have been 4 or 5 weeks old.  But as she grew she never got very big and always had a kitten stature.

In regards to affection Troja did really well considering her feral beginnings.  She cuddled the people she knew well and stayed clear of strangers even in her own house.  She had a special routine when it was bed time with my father giving her nibs and brushing her every night.  When my neice and I visited we used to like giving Troja her nibs by laying them out on her sleeping pillow either in the shape of a T.

Troja moved from Prague to Germany and ultimately retired with my parents to beautiful Vancouver Island.  She lived 16 long years which most feral cats in Prague just don’t  get to do.  In the end she succumbed to kidney failure and died peacefully in my father’s arm still looking like a kitten.

Goodbye Troja you were a great cat and pet.