A little bit of sunshine ....

Should definitely be taken advantage of! Especially this summer in New England!!!! Of course that brief bit of nice weather didn't last long, it is raining yet again. Yesterday I brought Steeler over to my friends Ann and Paul's place. They have two dogs, Brandy and Nico. Brandy and Steeler have done some previous work together recently and I knew that they would probably get along with each other. But it's been probably a year and half since Steeler has seen Nico. And while Nico doesn't really care about the dogs around him, I worry about how Steeler would react if he got nervous. I am doing much better with dogs exchanging butt sniffs... but when they go nose to nose I get just a bit nervous (ok maybe more than a bit). At any rate - we took the 3 dogs for a walk. Ann and Paul are not far from the Blue Hills reservation and near a equestrian facility. So we walked up the trail to look at the horses - no reaction at all from Steeler. Then we walked through the woods up to the pipeline. After Nico was turned loose, and ran full tilt towards Steeler with no reaction from Steeler, we let Steeler off leash as well. I had a couple moments where I was nervous, but I think it was just me being over anxious. Steeler and Nico ran around for a bit, and then Nico had to go back on leash for the rest of the walk. Nico (he's 12) is supposed to be taking it easy and building up to those energetic romps in the woods. We put Steeler back on leash and let Brandy loose. After working on her recall a few times, we let Steeler loose as well. Steeler and Brandy played for a bit, and we gave them a break when it got a bit too exuberant. Neither Ann or I want to have their play tip over into something more frantic. They did great together ... and Steeler seemed totally unbothered by Nico. So Steeler has two more buddies that he can walk with where I can work on relaxing a bit more. :-) Below is a short video from our walk.