Improvement & Fear

Let's start with fear.

Over the long Thanksgiving weekend we took Lucy mountain biking to a local park called Philip Arnold Park. The trails aren't very long, but they are technical for me, fun for my husband and a thrill for Lucy. To top it off, it's close to home. It was cold, barely 40 degrees, but it was sunny and almost dry, so the riding was fun. Lucy had a ball and though we only did 2 miles with her, I think it was plenty.

The next day we decided to duplicate the adventure. Back to the park, still cold, still dry, we unloaded ourselves, the bikes and the dog and took off. Instead of going around the perimeter of the park and then diving in to the woods, we started into the woods almost immediately. We found a trail that was new to us and enjoyed speeding along. Lucy, being a dog, didn't have to worry about short-cutting the trail. Another great day for her. Wow! Two days in a row running with my pack! Dog heaven.

You know how you get a gut reaction when least expected? Your going along just fine and then your perspective takes an abrupt left. Your internal antenna picks up an unknown signal when you didn't even know your antenna was up. All of a sudden I was aware of no Lucy. She often is in front of me and I can't see her, but my signal starting rapidly vibrating out of the blue. I called out to my husband to check if she was up ahead with him. Nope. He thought she'd run off the trail into the woods. This is not a great habit of hers, but she always circles back to keep up with us. Not this time. This time she'd vanished.

We called. We whistled. No dog. No noise of her coming through the brush. Nothing. Unfortunately Lucy is starting to go deaf. Her hearing is diminished in one ear and it makes it difficult for her to discern from which direction noise is coming. So our calling may have sounded like it was coming from the left versus the right, or ahead instead of behind. It's confusing for her and being visually separated from us without directional hearing compounds the issue.

My husband took off in one direction and stayed in the woods where we'd last seen her. Thank heavens for cell phones. We called back and forth. "Seen her?" "No." "Okay you take off on this trail, I'll take off on that." He rode back to the car, thinking she might have headed back there. No. Back into the woods we went, he on the inner trails, me on the outer.

And then I saw her. Standing. Panting. Head low. Exhausted. I called out and she spotted me, gave a woof of relief, plodded up to me, tail wagging low, relieved. Whew! What a blessing! What a close call! We must have been searching for over a 1/2 hour. We were both getting frantic. But she's back. We only did about 2.5 miles; who knows how many she ran.

Will she ever take off again? That was my husband's $1,000,000 question. I'd love to say no, but Lucy behaves pretty instinctively. She was hyped from running and sighting a bunny is enough excuse for a chase as she needs. I think we'll need to be much more attentive than we've been in the past.

On a lighter note...let's move on to the 'improvement' part of the title. I did a dog walk with a neighbor and her dog this afternoon. She said she couldn't believe the improvement she saw in Lucy. It's probably been three weeks since she last saw her. This is great news. She said Lucy was rarely dragging her paws. Because I see Lucy daily, I don't notice that she continues to get better, I just notice that she still drags her feet. I guess she's doing it much less than previously. Isn't that a wonderful way to leave this post?

P.S. There is no water at the park. The picture is actually from a trip to the ocean, but it's the only picture I have of Lucy running.