Our Neighborhood Walks

(FYI: All photos other than those of me and my canine siblings are similar but not actual)

Most days since I came to my new home, I’m taken on a walk. Elvis and Penny want to come, too. Elvis gets sore and limps if he walks very far so he’s treated to rides in a stroller that Mom pushes on our walks. Penny walks with us but after 1/2-3/4 of a mile, she just sits down and can’t be coaxed to continue. Thus she’s picked up and placed in the stroller with Elvis.

I’m very familiar with all the dogs in the neighborhood. There’s the collie Mom says looks like Lassie that we see in a fenced yard on the left. She’s beautiful and barks greetings to me. I jump up and down wanting to go play but so far we pass on by.

Almost directly across the street is a medium size brown dog that Mom calls Winston. He runs back and forth all along his fence line barking all the way. Once Mom paused near his property and let me draw closer. Winston stopped barking and just stared at me. I wish I could have read his mind.

Just past the collie on the left we pass a smaller fence further off the road where 2, and sometimes 3 Yorkies yap and yap at us. Penny and Elvis yap right back. I hardly take notice.

Sometimes I get to see two dogs further down the street inside a fence surrounding a big red barn. One of the dogs is a whippet and boy is he fast. He’s so thin that I wonder if he’s getting enough to eat. The other dog in the fence is a German shepherd. He’s about my height with a lot of long hair. I think he’s older though because his back is bowed and he moves much slower.

We turn left and continue toward a house at the next corner where I frequently see dogs. Sometimes it’s a large dog that looks a little like a dingo. He barks and runs around to get my attention. Other times we see small French Bulldogs. They bark once or twice as we pass but aren’t very interesting to me.

At the next turn we walk only a few hundred feet before we see a canine obstacle course on the right. Sometimes that property has a big basset hound and a medium sized benji. The basset has a deep low bark that I respect. The benji is just another yapper that runs back and forth.

Further down the street we pass the largest dog in our area, a great pyranese that has lots of white hair. He seems very regal and sure of himself. He barks a little dutifully alerting his household of us. He shares the household with a small white Scottish terrier.

There are other dogs on this leg of our walk but they are further away tucked behind houses or other buildings so I don’t get a good smell of them. One house though has two medium-large dogs behind a fence. One is a mixed-breed yapper but the other is an interesting Australian shepherd. His mouth opened like he’s barking, but there’s no sound. Huh?

The last stretch of the walk to return home has a house on the left with four hound dogs including a younger blue tick hound. They wear special collars that won’t allow them to come close to the street but they run along their invisible fence line trying to attract our attention for about 300 feet. The house across the street is where 3 large dogs live but they are usually barking at us from an inside picture window.

None of these dogs is as attractive to me as Lassie. I’d love to get to play with her in the dog park sometime.