Dog Park Adventure

Today we did something that we hadn't done since Hope came to live with us in August of 2005: we took her to the dog park. We used to go to the dog park fairly frequently when it was just us and the boys, even though they would often disobey their parents by heading back into the woods to hunt for rabbits, we always knew they wouldn't go too far and would eventually come back to us when they got tired enough. With Hope, we had concerns about her hunting instinct overpowering her desire to obey, so we really put off taking her somewhere where she would be off leash in an unfenced area. Since the weather is absolutely gorgeous today and we didn't have any other important plans, we decided to finally give the dog park a try.

The park started out well, with Hope cautiously checking out the area and shying away from the other dogs. She hung out near Celtic for about the first 5 minutes we were there.


Then we started on a little walk through some of the trails of the park, and Hope looked up at all of the open fields before her, and she TOOK OFF!!! Here's a nice picture of Chad running to catch up with her (with Celtic not far behind), since she clearly was completely ignoring the fact that we were calling her.



So after a scolding and another attempt with her off leash, followed by another sprint by Chad to catch up with her, we took a nice walk around the park with her ON the leash. We decided to give her one more try off leash after we got back to where some other dogs were playing, but as soon as she saw the open field again she took off in a dead sprint in the opposite direction of where we were. Chad was NOT happy with her, to say the least. I'm not sure how far she would have gone if it weren't for a pair of boxers who were playing out in the middle of the field she was running through. When they turned to chase her, she turned tail and sprinted straight back to Chad. We actually had to laugh since she had been completely ignoring him until she was scared, at which point she fled back to the security of her daddy's arms. :) Regardless, the rest of our walk was an enjoyable one ON leash through some of the scenic wooded areas of the park.

Even though our first dog park experience wasn't as successful as we had hoped, we still think the dogs had a good time, based on their appearance during the ride home.

You be the judge. :)