June 26, 2015

We had another bad deer encounter last night. We were walking through the neighborhood. We were out late because it was a very hot day, so it was almost dark outside. Suddenly a deer went running across the street about 30 yards ahead of us. A.J. threw a fit again. I gave him a quick correction, which got his attention immediately. But I couldn’t get him to ignore the deer. I walked him back away from the deer, then back to where it had been. We did this back-and-forth three or four times before he was able to walk by nicely without obsessing too much in the direction the deer had gone. I never got him to where he ignored it completely though, which I wasn’t happy about.

This morning we went for our usual walk. At the end I let A.J. run loose in the field across the street. He still hasn’t been great about coming back when I call him, but if I start walking towards him he’ll work his way towards me and I can hook the leash back on. Today, for the first time ever, I started walking towards him, and he ran off the other way. I yelled at him, and he went running off after a bird to an area he knows is out of bounds. He finally came back and I got him hooked up, but I was pretty angry with him. I was hoping next week when the temperatures are supposed to be over 100 that I could take him to the park and let him run loose to play in the water. Now I’m not so sure I want to try that. The park is close to the highway, and if he decides to go running off instead of playing in the water he could go running right out into the highway. Now I don’t know what to do with him in the hot weather, he’s going to be absolutely awful to live with without his usual massive amounts of exercise.

Today hasn’t been a good A.J. day. And it’s only 10:00 AM.