Dog-Walking in Woughton

Sunday morning and the dogs need a walk. They haven't been in a while. The problem is, as soon as you say 'walk' Alfie goes crazy. If you so much as touch his lead, which hangs on a hook on the wall in the kitchen, he sets off on his barking. Poppy is no better, dancing around madly. As I have explained in an earlier post, we usually have to put Alfie in a cage in the boot, and you have to arrange things so he doesn't see what you're doing as it's quite an effort to get the cage out of the house without him seeing. But Carol insisted we take him in the boot, without the cage. Once we had his lead on she got him out to the car and by some fluke got him in the boot and got his lead tied up to something or other so be couldn't jump back out once the lid of the hatch was closed. All well and good. Then we had to get Poppy in. She insisted in coming through to the front of the car and sitting on my knee. In other circumstances, she will sit quite happily on the back seat of the car. So we drove to Woughton where we go rarely with Alfie barking madly in the boot and Poppy sitting on my knee. Once there we had to avoid the pond which is immediately in front of the car when we parked as Poppy has the habit of going in any water to swim, in all weathers, so we had to keep both dogs on their leads to avoid any dog-swimming. Which we did successfully. We then walked off towards what is called Ouzel Park and the river, walking along quite happily through a meadow where there can be cows grazing, but, fortunately, none today. We came across a few stay people ambling along, minding their own business, until both dogs have to ingratiate themselves, but fortunately the people didn't seem to mind, but as it's muddy and both dogs are covered in mud on their feet, and if they jumped up they would transfer mud onto the people's clothes. We walked on and then turned round to return. Carol was talking to me about Poppy, had I thought she might be getting older, slowing down and any signs? I wasn't sure. As we walked along we went past a flooded area with water standing on the grass and a man was playing with his dog which seemed to be enjoying being in the water. The next minute I'd turned round to look for Poppy, and she was in the water. No signs at all of being 'old' as she was happily splashing about. How on earth she had got there so quickly I can't think as it was quite a distance from where we were walking along the path. She doesn't seem to show too many signs of age. So we returned to the car and left for home.