[293/365] big walk
Oct. 20th, 2021 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistGary was at his most mithery today -- and last night, poor mother_bones had terribly broken sleep thanks to his repeated requests to go downstairs and general inability to settle. He wore us both out this morning with seeming somehow dissatisfied even when he'd had games, treats, food and walks.
And when I got back from work things didn't seem much better. Finally, just as I was thinking it was nearly time to summon the energy (why am I so tired?! I slept decently, did my SAD lamp for the first time this year (after meaning to for a couple of weeks at least), remembered my vitamin D, had a big cup of coffee (that I'm still accidentally making too strong because whatever Sainsburys sent me this time is more finely ground than usual)...) to start making dinner, Gary demanded a walk.
diffrentcolours heard us getting ready to go out and asked if he could come along, which always makes the walks nicer (partly for me, but mostly for Gary, who regularly -- including this morning -- will ask me for walks just as a way to summon diffrentcolours. Often it works, as it did this evening! When it doesn't, Gary might just listlessly sulk in front of the house, pointedly glancing at the front door for any sign of his favorite human, for a little while until he inevitably gives up and goes back inside.
So the three of us went out and it was only a minute before I commented on Gary's enthusiasm. Lately there has had to be lots of dragging him as far as the end of the road (only a couple of minutes' walk, even for legs as small as his and a nose as curious as his), even when he has requested the walk. So it was nice to be going a slightly different way and have him directing the walk, more like his old self. It's not his arthritis limiting his walks, it seems to be some kind of mental thing. Some territory issue we humans can't understand, or something about his canine cognitive decline, or who knows what.
I could've saved my exclamations though; Gary kept trotting along, with little of his usual turning around or just stopping and putting his anchors down, making him much more immovable than any seven-kilo dog should feasibly be. He zoomed past the next landmark, what we call Favourite Cul-de-Sac (there's also a Favourite Road, a couple of Favourite Trees (it was these I was first glad to see him head toward today), Favourite Grass...), which I would've thought was a perfectly respectable walk. The next usual route after Favourite Cul-de-Sac is much longer, so whendiffrentcolours suggested it I wondered if it was too ambitious but figure it didn't hurt to try, if Gary did an about-face and insisted on going home, that'd be fine.
We did do the whole long route, through the garden village, and even made it slightly longer than we usually might. Gary was zoomy and happily sniffing through the whole thing, he never really needed redirecting or encouraging (or dragging) along much at all, which was a delightful change. We saw a beautiful fluorescent-orange sunset. It was on the verge of being too cold in my hoodie but it wasn't quite.
The light was quickly seeping out of the sky by the time we got home.diffrentcolours was late for a work thing and dinner was a half-hour later than it might have been because we hadn't expected to be out so long, but we both thought it was worth it. Last autumn I'd have taken a walk like this for granted, it was a very normal route then, but now it feels special.
mother_bones had terribly broken sleep thanks to his repeated requests to go downstairs and general inability to settle. He wore us both out this morning with seeming somehow dissatisfied even when he'd had games, treats, food and walks.And when I got back from work things didn't seem much better. Finally, just as I was thinking it was nearly time to summon the energy (why am I so tired?! I slept decently, did my SAD lamp for the first time this year (after meaning to for a couple of weeks at least), remembered my vitamin D, had a big cup of coffee (that I'm still accidentally making too strong because whatever Sainsburys sent me this time is more finely ground than usual)...) to start making dinner, Gary demanded a walk.
diffrentcolours heard us getting ready to go out and asked if he could come along, which always makes the walks nicer (partly for me, but mostly for Gary, who regularly -- including this morning -- will ask me for walks just as a way to summon diffrentcolours. Often it works, as it did this evening! When it doesn't, Gary might just listlessly sulk in front of the house, pointedly glancing at the front door for any sign of his favorite human, for a little while until he inevitably gives up and goes back inside.So the three of us went out and it was only a minute before I commented on Gary's enthusiasm. Lately there has had to be lots of dragging him as far as the end of the road (only a couple of minutes' walk, even for legs as small as his and a nose as curious as his), even when he has requested the walk. So it was nice to be going a slightly different way and have him directing the walk, more like his old self. It's not his arthritis limiting his walks, it seems to be some kind of mental thing. Some territory issue we humans can't understand, or something about his canine cognitive decline, or who knows what.
I could've saved my exclamations though; Gary kept trotting along, with little of his usual turning around or just stopping and putting his anchors down, making him much more immovable than any seven-kilo dog should feasibly be. He zoomed past the next landmark, what we call Favourite Cul-de-Sac (there's also a Favourite Road, a couple of Favourite Trees (it was these I was first glad to see him head toward today), Favourite Grass...), which I would've thought was a perfectly respectable walk. The next usual route after Favourite Cul-de-Sac is much longer, so when
diffrentcolours suggested it I wondered if it was too ambitious but figure it didn't hurt to try, if Gary did an about-face and insisted on going home, that'd be fine.We did do the whole long route, through the garden village, and even made it slightly longer than we usually might. Gary was zoomy and happily sniffing through the whole thing, he never really needed redirecting or encouraging (or dragging) along much at all, which was a delightful change. We saw a beautiful fluorescent-orange sunset. It was on the verge of being too cold in my hoodie but it wasn't quite.
The light was quickly seeping out of the sky by the time we got home.
diffrentcolours was late for a work thing and dinner was a half-hour later than it might have been because we hadn't expected to be out so long, but we both thought it was worth it. Last autumn I'd have taken a walk like this for granted, it was a very normal route then, but now it feels special.
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Date: 2021-10-21 02:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
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