I took Reilly for her 7th Birthday Walk to Hass Woods, where we had a really nice time walking around, looking at stuff together. I got down and looked at things she was interested in, but it was subtle Dog World stuff like scents that I can’t detect a lot of the time. I like to think she appreciated my interest. We took it back and forth, choosing paths she liked, and paths I liked. We have a good, grown up relationship.
Since the snow and ice that locked away a lot of the forest floor had melted back, interesting stuff was revealed that we had walked right over all winter. All the acorns from the huge crop we had this fall, old horse poop from trail rides months ago, and lots of deer bones.
I knew about a spot where the dogs showed me a few skeletons that were pretty scattered and broken and I hadn’t taken the time to connect the dots and notice how many deer were killed or dumped there. It’s a spot in the woods where trucks had pushed all the soil and stumps and rock out of the way of the housing they were putting in down below. Climbing around the huge piles of debris, Rei and I found a blind someone had built out of rocks, two openings to shoot out of, looking right down on the area we found the bones. It’s not dumped carcasses, it’s a shooting gallery. All does, too. Without the snow cover, I could easily see far more bones than I could before - three heads, and many more rib cages and pelvises.
My neighbor is a hunter, and in his stories he has told me what his father told him: One shot, one deer. Two shots, maybe a deer, three shots, NO deer. Even with two shooters, you can’t expect a group of them not to scatter after the first two shots. There had to have been a lot of shots in succession and too fast for flight. The deer were not harvested, they were just massacred and left. Nobody would know, deep in the woods, behind the berm of detritus the backhoes left. Now it’s months later, and only I know because I purposely walk my dog places no one else walks. Nothing to be done.
So for all these deer bones Rei and I were investigating, she would chomp on a scapula, or snap a rib, but then move along and leave it to go sniff and explore other things. We passed a lot of horse poop, too. Not once did she quickly gulp a ball of it, or roll. As a pup, she loved horse poop, and we have done enough “leave it” practice over seven years that she knows I’d prefer she didn’t partake, but she can still snarf a bite or two when she’s far enough ahead that I can’t stop her- only she hasn’t done that lately, despite ample opportunity. Other dogs will grab a bone from a carcass and begin a chase game in which angry person yells and scolds and dog doesn’t drop it. Reilly could do that, but I know not to play that game for attention, and unless we’re trying to get in the car I let her explore the bones.
Is she casual about these treasures of the woods now because I have trained her so well that she leaves them alone? I doubt it. I did work on it, but if she really wanted them badly she could stop the whole walk and sit in the boneyard munching, or guarding a bone. She doesn’t. Is she not lusting for horse poop and decaying deer because its old and dry and not as fragrant? Probably has something to do with it, but we have all seen how dogs who dont get out as much go nuts for these things. Is she too grown up for that behavior? I think grown dogs still love to roll in stuff- once a roller, always a roller. Or is she only mildly interested because she now regularly eats raw food, tripe and bones and it’s not such a big deal to find a dried out old deer leg, when you get fresh at home? Does tripe beat horse poop? It’s not really that different. Why doesnt Reilly draw a line between “I am allowed to eat bones, meat and tripe now.” and “essentially, this is bones meat and tripe, too, and I can eat it, right?” Is the motivation of the walk not to run off and delight in forbidden stinkables unleashed, but to keep travelling, exploring with her partner? For this is where my attention is- in our travelling through together. The good stuff comes from being together- I dont have to call her to come along with me, she will drop a ribcage on her own to catch up. If I stop to look at something and she is ahead, I wait only a few Mississippis before her footsteps stop and she pauses then gallops back to find me. That’s pretty nice.
