Testing...1...2..3

Busy weekends are the worst! Especially when all the busy takes you away from things you would rather be doing, like working on your projects, playing with your four legged friend or just sitting on the couch, doing nothing. Well, I'm going to do all the busy AND do the things I want to do, they will just occur in much smaller increments than hoped for.

Since I knew I would be gone a lot Saturday and Sunday, I took Henri out for a run. We went destination again, despite the smaller window of opportunity. Some things are worth making the extra time. 

I needed to get Henri out and running around other dogs again. We have a doggie 5k next weekend and while he's run by a few dogs on our neighborhood runs, I needed to test him around the more frequent occurrence of dogs. One of our destinations have wider sidewalks and the dogs are usually pretty well behaved. It's usually the same dogs, or at least dogs that walk there often enough that are comfortable and familiar, leading to better behavior. I thought it would be a safe place to get Henri back in his groove.

I planned it out carefully. We went one direction so that we would be coming up on most of the dogs face to face, not passing from behind. I wanted them to know Henri was there, to be aware of him and doing whatever they were going to do so I could adjust Henri to what he needed to do. He passed with flying colors, literally. He passed each dog, sometimes not even turning his head to sniff at them. I'm sure he was still sniffing, I just didn't see it. We even came across a few that we had to pass from behind and he kept moving, focusing on the run. He was a little nervous, I could tell, but stuck with me, did what I did and looked up at me with each praise, seemingly so proud, until he didn't seem to notice them anymore. Besides the other dogs, there were loud gun shot-ish noises coming from nearby. (Obviously, I did not know the loud noises would be occurring or I would not have taken him there.) He didn't like that, but he kept focused on me and the run and he didn't whine. It was either the best time to test him or not the best time to test him, but he did great, either way. I kept a close eye on him while remaining calm. I might try to get him out there one more time during the week, but I'm confident he'll be great for our run on Saturday.