Man, this has been a bitch this week. Had to go out and let the Dog visit. Realized that without any planning, and besides; it's that time of year to toughen up teh feet.
So, here is where we went and what we did. And yeah, we both did it barefoot :-)
First, we went up the street to where it hits the acequia madre, that is the main irrigation canal that feeds all of Carlsbad's agriculture. We looked for some old friends as we went, but they had gone indoors, or elsewhere.
Cool. Then we went along the alley between the last street between the acequia and what is west of the acequia. This alley is south of of the Alta Vista Middle School.
It's not a bad alley, as dog walks go. Mostly people and dogs aren't there to hassle you. Sometimes they are there to say hi, and you can talk about what you are doing, like picking up pecans, or your respective dogs, or the weather. That's nice.
The worst thing I've ever found in this dog walk alley was grey fox corpses. Left there to decay, they were. I wrote to the school and complained, but they didn't do anything. Eventually the grey fox corpses just went away. Kind of like house cat kill, technically. But I didn't like it. I'd seen those foxes, on these walks, some years back.
But I digress.
Okay, so here Casey and I are cruising down the dog walk alley. Oh, wait. I forgot some previous stuff.
The street that leads to that alley runs a couple of blocks. I have a neighbor on the corner, has little dogs some times. Chicano lady. Sometimes has yard sales.
I went out today with gifts. I know, I know. But I wanted to. And it was good.
I actually got to meet her, and officially give her a necklace of brass and blue coral beads. It was cool. We are friends now.
Okay, now back to the alley. The people with the rabid retrievers are long gone, so the next hurdle is the people with the pit bulls and varients. They have picked up a great deal. Their dogs are contained, and if they're out there, they wave. Yay! good for them. (the humans, not the dogs)
Okay, now we're out to where the alley hangs into the Carlsbad Acequia Madre, so to speak. Acually, it cuts back along the last block of home properties and leaves the Carlsbad Irrigation District to its own devices.
Always sort of a relief to get up there with Casey. Pretty barren, but there is water from the Pecos, and much less chance of loose dogs. The wildlife is easy by comparison.
This walk was not a wildlife walk, though. When we go down the Southern Canal (that's what they call the Acequia Madre here) south of Greene Street (another main drag), it gets much more interesting, and after a mile or so, you get desert scrub, mule deer (coming up from Dark Canyon Draw) and even grey fox at times (which is incredibly cool).
We stopped before we went down into the cool road south of Greene St. Went back up into the south of town. Cruised up into some streets we don't always walk.
Found some kids. Girl and two boys. Girl was like nine year old dark Irish. Boys: maybe eight year old dark African, and maybe 13 year old big brown ethnic something?
The girl jumped in to take charge. Kids are always pouncing on my dog.
The boys were happy to move in too, once their ringleader did it.
It was interesting. I liked it. The boys really seemed to be her gang. I didn't see anything that suggested for a second that she was dissing them.
She was just there, and working with them. The entire interaction was really fluid, and friendly. It started out with a bit of "Whoa, what is this?" and I got into it with some "My dog loves people, he just jumps on people too much," and it moved on a bit more into gentle positive social interaction, and then they all went off somewhere else, and then so did I.