Friday

 

After our Toby walk, we rode our bikes out to the causeway to walk; then after our walk, we rode out to Honeymoon Island. Some of the pathways were still flooded from recent rains.

Red Tide off of Honeymoon was measured as “very low” today, so there was no odor or dead fish.

Because of the rains, after lunch we took Toby for a trike ride on the leash for exercise instead of fetching in the yard. Our yard was so saturated that Mas Fina left a 6-foot strip of unmowed grass along the street.

Toby has gotten down leash running pretty well. He no longer jumps up on John or gets in front of the trike. We did see a woman riding her bike with her dog with a gizmo attached to her bike. It was a stiff arm with a flexible leash, keeping the dog away from the bike with a little bit of room to trot safely. Sort of like John’s arm.

One mile with periodic sprints and he’s done for a few hours.

We had a good afternoon walk at the community center on our way to pick up our Juan burritos.

Toby has been very well behaved today. Upon further reflection on yesterday’s disaster, we realized that the cumulative effect of the rain and the rain disruption that morning not only deprived him of exercise, but it also threw off his routine. Dogs love routines and structure.

After dinner, we decided the backyard was dry enough to do some fetching. Five or ten minutes of fetching and he’s exhausted. 

We signal the end of the game by holding both arms over our heads, like a successful field goal signal in football. When we do that, he immediately heads to the back door. 

Amusingly, we taught him that by accident. We were actually just trying to keep the other ball out of his reach! Anyway, now he runs to the door to go inside with that simple signal.

Dogs are always learning, sometimes things you don’t intend.

He is very patient with us as we try to lob the ball over the avocado tree. We are often not successful and the ball rattles around like it’s in a giant pinball machine before finally dropping to the ground.

Today’s bike route to Honeymoon Island and to the mobile home park behind Publix that we wanted to explore.

Miles walked: 9

Miles biked: 13.73