On and off rain, outside whenever possible. I got my 12 mile run in by doing 3 round trips on my now familiar 2 mile running route. I had been worried about dogs, but didn't encounter any the day before or the 5 times I had run by the houses near the end of the road on this morning. Then, on my very last pass of the houses when I was feeling much more confident, appearing out of nowhere was a big shaggy sheepdog. It was at my side and jumping up on me before I knew what happened. I think I figured out pretty quickly it was not going to bite me, but my adrenaline shot up none the less. I stopped running, not wanting it to chase me and figured it would follow me for a house or two, get out of its comfort zone and then go back home. We passed one property, then another, then another. I started running again and it just wouldn't go home. I was still thinking it had a very large area it was used to roaming and it would eventually go home. It would run up ahead, stop, jerk back and wait for me, then it would take off again. On one over zealous pass, it knocked me off my feet and I was not happy. I kept running. At one point, I made a turn onto the public path and it lost sight of me. I could see it looking back for me and I was so tempted to keep running. I figured it would eventually find it's way home. I was now less than a mile away from the marina and I felt responsible for it. I whistled to it, and it gladly spotted me and bounded over my way. I checked it for tags and there were severl phone numbers in it. The plan now was to keep it with me until we got back to the marina. When we got closer to the marina, I would periodically call to it and it was my happy little companion. It was great at staying to the side of the road and not too far away from me. I got nervous when we started to get near people and other dogs. To the outsider it looked like my dog, but I didn't know if I'd have enough control over it if another dog got too close. It followed me all the way down the dock but refused to go down the gang plank to the boats. The people up by the dock store probably thought I was weird when it had appeared to be mine as I led it down the dock, then I just left it. I got John and the girls and started explaining the story to them. We went back up to the dock store and I started explaining to everyone that it wasn't my dog. The harbor master overheard us trying to call the owner and she pretty much took over from there. John's cell had little reception, so she called on the marina phone, left a message and told us she'd leash up the dog and keep it until the owner was found. What a relief! While we were waiting for her to find a leash, we were holdnig the dog by the collar and several people came up and asked about what kind of dog it was, people were guessing a labradoodle. The girls loved their momentary dog. It turned out that the owner flagged down Tobin and Tara when they were walking along the road and asked if they had seen the dog. As a matter of fact we have, they replied.
We had to wait quite a while before we could get outside with the girls. Their playtime on the beach was brief and ended in a down pour. Once they were showered up and warm, we took them up to the public path to a house with an amazing number of hummingbird houses and lots of humming birds. Look at the pic at the top of the post, does it get much better than this? We ran into another dog up there. It ran out from a yard and onto the path and started to follow us. At least this time, we could hear it's owner call for it, and it was a cute little dog, the girls loved it. They got to walk it back to its owner. John may have gotten in another walk by himself this day.
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