who walks whom?

A few weeks ago, our neighbors across the hall approached Chloe and asked her if she’d like to walk their dog on occasion. In fact, they were going out of town for a day and needed someone to walk him a couple of times. Chloe was thrilled by the prospect and loved it. O. is a sort of large dog (a Border Collie) and extremely gentle, slow and friendly.

The first walk, he and Chloe and Camille headed up to the square. For the afternoon walk, O. only wanted to go to the dog park. From those walks, we learned that he knows where he wants to go and where he doesn’t want to go and is happy to pull Chloe along behind him.

This week, Chloe was asked to walk O. twice a day as our neighbors can’t get home during the day to take him out. Yesterday went great. Today Chloe rushed home from gymnastics to get O. out for his walk. After 40 minutes, I started to worry. I wasn’t concerned that something had happened to them, but I worried that maybe O. decided to sit down and wouldn’t budge. And that Chloe was then panicking about it. I sent Camille out to look for them at our building’s dog park and the up on the square. No luck. I then headed out. After a couple minutes, Camille called me to let me know they were back.

Apparently, O. got it in his mind that he wanted to go not to the little dog park, but to the big dog park. And he knew the way. And he was going to take Chloe along with him. Chloe followed along on the end of the leash, only exerting herself to tell him that they must not jaywalk but cross in a crosswalk. Chloe loved every minute of it.

I think that from now on when Chloe heads out to walk the dog, she’ll have a phone with her to let me know that she’s being happily dragged around town, not stuck dealing with an immovable beast.

choe and O - 19 jun 2012