Walking The Dogs

Another fine and sunny day, and certainly not to be spent cooped up indoors, so we decided to take the dogs for a walk. We walked along the Redway behind the house towards the Grand Union Canal and Woughton village. I say walked, yes, but both dogs ran, Alfie yapping noisily the moment we left the house. It's a real effort to put his lead on, Poppy not quite so difficult. Whenever we meet someone walking along, generally minding their own business, Alfie has to run up to them and ingratiate himself. Poppy is no better. Alfie runs ahead of us (we let them off their leads as soon as we got on the Redway.) and keeps running back towards us. He doesn't run far, just within sight and ear-shot. A t the bridge over the canal we walk along the tow-path. If she gets her way, Poppy will jump in water. She seems to love it, regardless of the cold, although to do it's been unseasonably warm. Alfie is not so keen. He's learnt from bitter experience that the water is not very nice, particularly after the incident which took place a short way along this tow-path, and recalled in an earlier post. He was running along, minding his own business, and decided to jump a low wall, and splash! Into the canal! He had to be fished out, and then ran around for some time looking like a downed rat until he dried out.  Poppy, meanwhile, was eyeing up the canal and it looked as if she was about to jump in for a swim. I think she avoids going in where there is nowhere for her to scramble in and out, and this was the case along the canal-bank. But, as we were walking through a wooded area she decided to go into an extremely muddy, and smelly, ditch! She came out of it with her lower body caked in the smelliest, blackest and thickest mud imaginable! I think she'd saved this up so as to cause as much annoyance as possible. All we could do was keep well away from her, as she was really smelly.Anyway, we walked back towards Woughton-On-The-Green , a site of archeological interest as it was where the medieval village stood, and round through an orchard-area and then, eventually, back towards the canal, the Redway and home. I think we well and truly wore out both dogs as they slept the rest of the afternoon. Poppy was not allowed into the lounge as she was still caked in mud and we were determined that she wasn't going to leave a trail of muddy paw-prints over the carpet or on the sofa, so she was relegated to the kitchen for several hours. But she made her presence known with a lot of howls, barks and really odd baby-like sounds. Sort of 'woe is me, I'm being hard-done-by! Nobody loves me, nobody cares' sort of carry-on. She can be a real prima-donna if she wants to.