Morning Walk with Abbie:

This morning the moon was extremely bright and was casting shadows as Abbie and I set out for our morning walk. We have been starting our walks as the sun starts to rise and walk toward the sunrise. However, this morning, we needed to get an earlier start on the day while the moon and stars were still shining in the dark cloudless sky.

We started walking toward the East as we normally do, but Abbie was spooked by something. She normally starts our walks with extreme enthusiasm, but this morning was different. There was something different, something scary to her; so she dug in her feet and changed our minds about the direction we were going to walk.

We had walked to the end of our property, but we acted on her hesitation; turned around and walked back to the house. I thought she might have sensed something was wrong with my husband, so we went back into the house to see if anything was amiss. Nothing was wrong, so we went back outside, walked to the end of the driveway, and turned west. That seemed to work for Abbie, so we walked our mile and a half with the moon in front of us and our shadows behind us.

We walked past Des’s house. She was sleeping in front of her TV so the windows of the old schoolhouse were illuminated by flashing pink, blue and green lights throughout her front room. Abbie and I kept on walking toward the lake’s end, crossed the highway, and kept walking.

When the first car crossed the highway behind us, Abbie stopped and watched (as we have been practicing in our training. Praise followed, but she wasn’t interested in eating her regular treats. It took a few attempts at treating for calling her name, until I realized she was only going to respond to the good treats – the soft ones that don’t require chewing. This morning was a morning where she needed to focus on the road, eat quickly and quietly and pay attention to the shadows.

As we got to the end of our walking away from our place, the sun was starting to show a rising of pink and orange on the Eastern horizon. Abbie had no problem walking toward the sunrise now that the shadows were missing. When it was time for Abbie to do her business, she made sure she was well off the road in the tall grass. It was as if she didn’t want to leave a trace of her walk in public view this morning (which sometimes happens when she is just too excited to keep walking).

We crossed back across the highway, past the house with the goats, rabbits and geese, past Des’s (where the TV was still making pretty images in her windows). Once we were almost to our place, Abbie started pulling in order to get home to her comfort zone. We finished by crossing into the yard and let out the chickens.

It was a good walk, but there was some undefined scariness outside. It made being home a nicer place to be, but there was still something lurking out there that I thought I saw out of the corner of my eye.