Day 330 - Weekend Walk

overload

It was a beautiful sunny day today, so once again we took the opportunity to get the camera out...

The cotoneaster outside our door is so laden with fruit that I had to sweep up the hundreds of little red berries that were carpeting our path from the car.  Despite Wonderboy's best efforts to eat them all, there are still many hundreds on what is just a small shrub.   It really is a bumper crop, which I hope will sustain local birds for a while (and the odd dog). 

As we strolled through the orchard, several small planes flew overhead:

wing high

I don't know if there was some sort of event going on nearby...

wing low

...but they all seemed to be going in different directions!

red belly

This small selection isn't all of them either - just the first three to go by, before I got bored of snapping away at them...

I took an interesting series of shots of Robin charging across the field towards me...far too many to even contemplate posting here....but some of them seem to show that there are essentially two body postures that the dog alternates between...

Firstly, rear feet pushing into the ground, forefeet lifted and launching:

head high

This is characterised by front paws tucked under, mouth open, and ears flapping high and swept backwards, as the dog pushes hard off his rear legs to leap forwards...

Posture two occurs at the bottom of the cycle:

rump high

Here the front legs are on the ground and pulling the rest of the dog forwards...rear feet are lifted and tucking, mouth and eyes more closed as the head and body compress at the front end of the animal...ears tend to flap amusingly down and out.

The timing of the rapid fire burst shots meant that I have a series of photo's where Robin basically alternates between these two positions.

Anyway, up at one of the local badger setts, Robin helpfully showed us which of the many holes is the most active.

badgers!

He stood like this for a minute or so, with his head cocked as though listening, and peering into a fairly well-used entrance.

We're planning on taking the trailcam back up there tomorrow and focusing on this hole, to see what sort of local activity is happening at the moment.

In the woods, I spotted a Great Spotted Woodpecker, high up in the now bare trees.

woody

Unfortunately he kept moving around, and it was difficult to get a clear shot without foreground foliage ruining the focus.

But at least in this shot, although blurred, you can see that this is without doubt a GSW...first time I've got one on film I think, despite the fact that we see them all the time here.

Whilst up in the woods, we had a worrying incident with The Boy Wonder.  He was off lead, and nosing about, when Anna realised that he was eating something.  We couldn't see what it was, so when our first calls to "leave it!" were ignored, rather than get into a pointless shouting match, I decided to run away!   

The best way to get a dog to come to you is to run away from it...of course, the best way to get an aggressive or threatening dog to attack you is to run away from it, so you need to use such strategies in the appropriate context!

Anyway Robin immediately rushed to follow us, but after a few yards, he suddenly dropped to his belly.  We went back to him, but he whimpered and seemed reluctant to stand up...when I asked him to, he stood and took a step or two, but then his back legs seemed to collapse again.

By this time we were very worried...Anna was concerned that our insurance hasn't kicked in yet, and I was wondering how I was going to manage to carry a 65lb dog the half a mile or so back home!

I crouched behind him and started to palpate his hips and his back legs...the whole area seemed very tense and stressed.

Suddenly, he started to convulse, and I immediately saw that he was going to heave...a moment later, he retched up everything he had eaten so far today...a large lump of kibble from breakfast, a few assorted treats, a side order of grass...and a whole apple!

By whole apple, I mean entire, intact - a complete apple.

When we'd run away, he must have grabbed one of the apples he'd been scrumping, and with no time to chew, just swallowed it whole.  His gullet clearly didn't appreciate this, and rejected it in no uncertain terms.

As soon as the apple was gone, Robin instantly recovered...he quickly scoffed the lump of breakfast kibble he'd just vomited (yeah, I know...dogs, huh?  No sense of disgust!), and trotted off lightly ahead, as though nothing had happened!

A few minutes later, we came across a small rabbit bimbling about on the path, and Wonderboy rushed off after it.  It hunkered down and he was unsure where it had gone, even though he was almost standing on top of it!

As it ran off again he gave chase, grabbing it with his mouth then letting it go.  I called him off and to be fair he immediately backed off and left it alone.

He wasn't trying to hurt it, he was performing a test bite.  Bluez did the same thing with a rabbit up in the same woods.  They're testing it for prey-ness, rather than trying to actually bite it.  Neither Robin this time nor Bluez previously hurt the rabbit in any way, although I don't suppose the rabbits appreciated being in the jaws of a huge predator. 

It was encouraging to see that whilst he has the chase instinct which is a characteristic of retrievers, he doesn't have a strong urge to bite or kill.

Anna got a good look at the rabbit, and it had myxomatosis...lot of it about around here, I'm afraid...

Finally, on the way home, we stopped in the field for a moment of quiet communion after our adventures:

one man and his dog

It strikes me again how wonderfully varied the walks are around here...there's always something different to see!

And despite walking regularly in more or less the same places, as the seasons turn, the flavour changes...

It never gets dull!

:-)