Today's Cloud

A couple of incidents not going as well as expected today, like how he focused on a dog even though it was far away (that speed walking Golden Retriever) and how he was quite concerned about a woman following behind us in the dark on our evening walk (she eventually passed us - with us off to the side - without Monster losing his cool, but he wasn't relaxed about it), but let's focus on the real problem we came across today: the lovely dung heap a farmer has plonked down in the middle of our usual stretch of off leash walking path... Monster is absolutely great about not eating gross things - great about not eating anything, actually! He doesn't touch feces, dead animals, or even "real" food (he'll walk right past a dropped sausage) - I haven't had to deworm him since he was a puppy (naturally I test him for parasites, I'm not just guessing), plus it's just so nice that he doesn't go around chewing on something revolting. But... Instead he has a different, quite disgusting, weakness: if something is gross enough, he'll desperately want to roll in it! A dung heap? Yeah, that's on his top ten...

What? Are you saying there's something wrong with that?! Eau de Monster, people!

When he caught the scent on the wind, he set off like an arrow straight for the dung heap... I saw what was going on (I could smell it too) and could call him back before he reached it, but I had to leash him because he was practically bouncing from desperately wanting to run off and take a dip! So now we have that to contend with every day, presumably for quite a while (I expect it's meant to be used as fertilizer on some field or other, but the farmers round here are rarely in any rush so who knows when that'll happen), which feels quite depressing now that we've found this bit of freedom for Monster nearly every day...

Aw, come on! If you just let me go for a swim in it, there's no problem!