The walking. Oh, the walking. My goal, as I am sure is the same with many other dog owners, is to be able to walk at a pace of my choosing, for as long as I choose, where I choose, and have the dog accompany me without molesting anyone else. Simple? Not really.

First of all we have to deal with the pulling. The balanced lead harness arrangement works wonders but there is still pulling. He pulls forward, I jerk back. I get a few steps of slack lead and then the pulling starts again. Pull, jerk, slack. Over and over. Until he gets tired near the end of the 45 minute walk. I of course, got tired at about the ten minute mark.

Then we have to deal with distractions. Anything that moves, really. Other dogs are at the top of the list for not being able to listen to me, followed by people, birds, squirrels, cats, and blowing bits of garbage. A new distraction is the need to mark with urine. I have been told this will stop when he is neutered but in the meantime, we make an increasing number of piddle stops on the route.

Occasionally, he will stop in his tracks for no apparent reason. When he was much younger, he would stop and sit to think and study something new to him. Now he just stops and doesn’t appear absorbed by anything in particular. He’ll come along when you ask so at least there isn’t any stubborn hanging back. But it is sort of odd.

Thankfully, all of this not-so-great behaviour only occupies maybe ten percent of the entire walk so I really shouldn’t complain. It is true of human nature however, that we do tend to focus on the 10% that is not good and forget about the 90% that is good. For the record, Rockwell is good most of the time and when he isn’t “good”, he’s just distracted.