Poor Chuck

The man and I took off running today, he very generously stays behind me and doesn't ever comment about the pace, or lack thereof.  We had Chuck the dog with us, as usual.  The man leaves me part way through and goes off and runs for about another, oh, hour and a half...whatever.

Chuckster himeslf loves little in life more than chasing pinecones if we toss them for him, so as I am running along if I happen to see one, I'll lob it off for him.

Now, there is also an old guy with a gigantic male boxer who Chuck is frankly frightened of.  They see each other fairly often and Chuck is normally pretty good at avoiding him. The boxer seems to work on a purely visual system.  Maybe those squashed noses and huffing breath also impact on their sniffers.  Anyway, Chuck is normally well aware of him and takes off into the distance long before we come across them.

The system isn't working as well now we're going faster.  We keep coming across them in the woods rather suddenly.  It is tricky too as the man does not keep a completely regular schedule so I'm finding it tricky to avoid him.  Both dogs are off leash in the hills, I should add.

Chuck normally walks slowly away and the dog normally leaves him be.

Today however, poor Chuck, I found a pine cone, picked it up and heaved it downhill as we peeled around a corner.  Right at the boxer.

Ooops.

The man and I kept running, knowing that was the best option for Chuck, he ran after us and the boxer after him.

I caught up with them when there were both standing stiffly in the path.  They were at least still parallel rather than T junctioned, a much closer to a fight posture.

The boxer's owner carries a stick with him, so I picked up a stick myself and walked past the pair of them.  Chuck started to move with me and so did the boxer, somewhat more slowly.  I turned, brandished the stick in his face and told him, in Catalan, to get lost.

Thankfully he did.

He is reasonably well trained, as in he mostly listens.

The three of us headed off for a loop in the hills, at the end of which the man left us and Chuck and I headed back, the man advising that I do another loop so I don't catch up to them.  Wasn't sure I wanted to so we went back slowly, still ran into them, with an about face and rapid retreat.  I also felt odd stopping so long mid-run.  Made me feel weird.

Should listen to the man more often.

Moving day tomorrow and Sunday.

Wish us luck, hope the power's on.