My Daily Dog Walks

 It is a long day... to come home from work, do barn chores and continue to do house chores and complete other commitments.  It would be easy to sit and watch T.V. after a long day, but then my dogs are left energetic and anxious and I am left a few pounds heavier as the months go by! Every day, rain or shine or snowstorm, I walk my dogs through the fields because it makes them happy.  There are days that I would rather not go, but it is good for me and it is good for them! 

I always begin by going down the laneway by our barn.  I am generally followed by a goose and cat for the first 100  metres, and then they begin to realize that we are not turning around so they wonder off to do their own cat and goose things, as I continue with the dogs into the back of the property.  We make sure to stop and say hello to the cows, where I often get a  whiff  of manure as we walk by and the dogs do a little cattle dog chase until I unreasonably yell at them to stop.       

Often times, I stop mid-walk with my dogs and lay down in the field.  It defeats the purpose of my exercise, but I remember my childhood where laying in the grass (or the snow!) was exciting and so I try to remember the joy of looking up at the sky and imagining what the shapes of the clouds could be.  My dogs then wonder why I am lying on the ground and if I am indeed ok.  So, they run back over to me, letting me know that I have interrupted them  from their sniffing and snooping, to check that I am  alive.  Sometimes I get a paw in the face or a dog laying on top of me, but it is comforting to spend just a few minutes looking up,  because  we spend so much of our lives looking ahead or looking back and sometimes even looking down, but never up!  My dogs bring me back to reality with a few licks to the face and I am beckoned to get up and continue on the journey around the fields.    

This simple pleasure was taken for granted for so long, as I have grown up always being able to walk through fields with my dogs.  I have come to appreciate this luxury, as many people do not have the opportunity to lie in the middle of a field or walk their dogs freely in pastures.  I think it would be frowned upon to lie down in the grass and talk to myself (I mean talk to the dogs!)  in a public park, but in  a field with only the dogs listening (and maybe a nosy  neighbour  at the fence row), it doesn't matter!