one step forward..... five steps back?

i am generally a positive person, looking on the bright side, wanting to see the best. the sun was out today, so i had high hopes for a nice walk today. the dogs were sure glad to be out (but then, they always are, unless it's a trip to the back yard in the rain).

things on red fox were pretty much dried out, a big (and pleasant) change from yesterday's slop.

but then i started running into clueless dog owners. the woman who had a leashed border collie & an unleashed small dog. i leashed up & sat the dogs. asked if her loose dog would come up to us. she said probably. ok- i leashed my dogs because your dog is leashed, leashed and loose dogs don't mix, and now you're going to let your loose dog run up to us? help me out here.

of course the puppy wouldn't come when she called it. of course echo grumped when they all came up to us. she said she couldn't let the border collie off leash because he runs away. but what she needed to do was have the puppy under control, not have the other dog off leash.

oscar the schnauzer running ahead of his person on the trail. i went the other way, leashed up, sat the dogs because it didn't look very controlled. owner calls oscar, who doesn't respond to her but instead charges toward us barking. i let halle go.

walking out going down the hill in the on leash area a small dog comes racing down the trail barking at us. i sit the dogs. it comes rushing up to us & gets rolled, yips. owners calling it with no luck. i mentioned that it was the on leash part of the trail. they apologized, weren't familiar with the area. said the dog was new to them and they were sorry it had run up to us. do you think it might be a good idea to keep a new dog leashed until you know how it's going to behave?

this is the first time in a long time that i've had stuff like this happen, but on top of all of the poop i'm seeing and the seeming disregard for trail damage it's a bit discouraging.

but just to prove that it isn't just on the trails, i took this on the way home.

and just to remind myself that it ain't all gloom and doom, it was just a bad week for this sort of thing and there is way more positive than negative here are the shots of the lovely (which was most of it) part of the walk.

happy trails!