HUNTING THE MAD PUP

I finish work on Fridays early. No I’m not winding down for retirement. We all work extra hours the other 4 days and so leave early on Fridays.

I was fed up with sitting at a computer most of the week, so I decided to take the terrorist and the mad pup for a walk.

Anyone whose read my previous blogs about the terrorist will know that she loves a good run in the forest that is only 10 minutes walk from my house. They will also know that the terrorist and the mad pup didn’t get on too well to start with. Well they still don’t. It’s a sort of stand-off. The pup leaves the terrorist alone and the terrorist doesn’t sit on the pup’s head.

The mad pup has to have a harness rather than a collar because she IS truly insane and chokes herself pulling on a collar. The terrorist also wears a harness, but because when she sees a cat, she immediately turns round, pulls away from the lead holder and slips her head out of the collar….and she’s gone. She’s never actually caught one. Having a 2 inch ground clearance means short legs, which means not much speed.

The walk progressed and as the mad pup was behaving herself (and no roads for a mile or so) I decided to let her off for a run. Big mistake. Off she went like a rocket into the shrubbery and that was the last I saw of her.

At first I wasn’t too worried, because the mad pup is also a terrible coward and I knew she’d be back as soon as something rustled in the undergrowth.

After about half an hour walking (I take a circular route so no I wasn’t taking the chance to lose the little sod) I began to wonder where the little idiot had got too so I went back to her disappearance point and started tracking. Easy at first. A dog at full gallop leaves a fairly good trail, but after about 150 metres she got onto a stone surface. Don’t listen to the films. You can’t track across stone, well not a small, non-hooved animal anyway.

I cast about, trying to see where she came off the rock, but to no avail.

While I was searching, the terrorist was running around, towards me and back, towards me and back. Not unusual for her, so I took no notice.

After about half an hour I was on the point of giving up and reporting her missing, so I put the terrorist back on the lead and that’s when she started going nuts. She would not walk properly. Instead she insisted on heading off at about 30 degrees from the path I wanted to take.

There was a degree of dragging and a lot of dogging in of doggy heels and a fair bit of doggy whining and barking.

Finally I got the message. She wanted me to go with her, not the other way round.

Now she very rarely pulls a stunt like that, so I decided to follow her.

She took me through bushes, across 2 streams, round several boggy areas. It took about an hour and we must have covered nearly 3 miles.

At the end of this treck, the terrorist lead me round a final rhododendron bush and there was the mad pup. Poor little sod had got herself hung up by her harness on a branch. From the looks of the churned up ground and the twisted state of the harness, she’d been hung up for quite some time.

The mad pup was certainly pleased to see us and the terrorist looked very pleased with herself.

I unhooked the pup, put her back on the lead and we headed for home. Strangely (or perhaps not so strangely) the pup walked well on the lead on the way back, something she’s never done before, so perhaps something good has come out of her experience.

For the moment, she’s curled up in her bed and refusing to come out, but tomorrow is another day. We shall see.