Beyond the black stump with Phil...

Today was a particularly big day for Phil and I, ending up beyond the black stump and back! I hadn’t planned it that way…these things just happen! Lots of pigeons and some new trails…

We all know Phil is a big fan of pigeons, and some days it’s pretty slow, and some days, like today, we get to see a lot of pigeons. Phil is very good at spotting them and today his spotting was better than mine… on a couple of stalks we did, it was a lil while before I saw anything. Phil is a great Bird Dog! Each time we saw them, we would creep up slowly and have a little run towards them. A couple of times we got really close…Phil is getting very good at the stalking part.

Whoever sees the pigeons first points them out. Phil always gets a bit excited at first, but we stop and I whisper to Phil to walk slow, then as we step forward, I count to three and then we run… Well, it’s a Mike-run… not a real run! But Phil gets a kick out of it, and he is all happy and smiley and tail-waggly! We got to do that 7 or 8 times today, so I am sure Phil will have enjoyed that immensely.

Also, we did a pretty crazy walk too. I hadn’t really planned that we’d walk as far, but you know how it is… one pigeon after another kept popping up, and we got distracted and found ourselves miles away from home.

For pretty much most of my walks with my team, we rarely do the same walk back to back. Sometimes we zig and zag over different loops or incorporate a new lil segment. Today Phil and I found ourselves adding another lil section we haven’t done together before. It’s one of my fave lil tree lined pathways that I get to do with Billy. It’s always nice to see “my” Dogs having fun and taking in new sights and sounds. My team always knows when we divert off the tracks we’ve done, and I can always tell they like that by the extra tail wags or their busy noses!

So we did this crazy big loop and took in a couple more parks and climbed the hill and headed home. Don’t tell your mum we got a bit distracted today and lost track of time!

See ya next week Phil!