Well, I must say that spring weather has arrived, and brought with it lots of things to do to enjoy the outdoors. This is probably why it’s been awhile since I had time to sit down to write a little something. There’s been lots to write about, but not much time to do it. With this nicer weather, most of the snow has disappeared. There are some piles built up by the snowplows that are taking their time to melt away, but they won’t last long. The time change has also changed our routine a little. It’s now daylight when Jim gets home at night, which means that we can take a nice little walk around the neighbourhood in the evening. The puppies love it, and we do too.

Today, we discovered a new place to walk to, right in our own neighbourhood. We took Will and Emma for a nice leisurely walk on this sunny but crisp Saturday morning. We walked down Town Forest Road, where we’ve taken to walking because it’s a quiet road with not too much traffic. We walked a little farther than we normally do, since we had extra time and nothing pressing to do. It’d been a long time since we’d walked that far, but we weren’t surprised to come across the baseball diamond where the local kids team (The Simsbury Babe Ruth) plays. What was a pleasant surprise was that the field was completely fenced and gave us a nice area to let the pups run. For the first time ever, at least outside the house, we let the pups run off leash. You should have seen how happy they were! They ran together, away from us about 100 feet, then turned and ran right back to us. If dogs could laugh, these two pups were doing it. You could just see the joyful smiles on their faces, they were so happy.

We took this great opportunity to practice some recall commands, so we separated ourselves, about 100 feet or so, and Will and Emma ran back and forth between us. They would come when we called, and they ran and ran, right to us, then back again to the other one. We decided this would be the perfect place to bring the soft frisbee type disc that we bought for them. Next time.

The whole thing came to a fun end when a woman jogging with her hound dog went by. Well, of course the beautiful hound couldn’t resist joining our pups to run and play. He found his way into the field (simply pushed open one of the gates) and came over to meet Will and Emma. Will, of course set into his barking routine, to invite him to play. They crouched and ran and played for just a few minutes, until Troy’s owner recovered him and took him back on the jogging route. What fun for the pups, though. I’m not sure what they loved more, meeting a new dog, or having some freedom to run and run and run. This is definitely a place we will return to, at least until baseball season comes!