Today's Sunshine

Today on a walk, I had Monster off leash and was throwing a stick for him (I know high energy activities like that can be very stressful and have a bad effect on reactivity, but I make sure to demand focus and self control in between throws, he has to be able to perform without signs of stress, and I limit it to a minute or two before he has to hand over the stick and we walk on). I threw it off to the side of the path we were on, into some long grass. Monster raced off to find it, and unfortunately it turned out I must have nearly brained a hare with that throw, because as he was sniffing around to find the stick in the grass, a hare jumped up right next to him and zig-zagged away! And I'm not talking "it couldn't have been more than 15-20 meters" next to him, no, I'm talking "it bumped into his hip as it jumped up" next to him. Literally. Today, Monster was tackled by a hare... I thought disaster had struck - sure, Monster's not a crazed hunter, and I know I can recall him from a hot trail, but everyone has their limit you know. In my minds eye I saw him galloping off toward the horizon. Instead, reality showed me this:

Dude! Would you knock it off!? I'm busy here!

(Obviously it's an old photo, but you get the idea.)
Monster has a marvelous way of absolutely not multitasking when his nose is switched to "on"; he was looking for a stick with my smell on it, the hare was clearly not a stick and smelled all wrong, so there was no reason for him to pay it any attention. While I gaped after the hare Monster found the stick and came bouncing back to me (to whack me in the thigh with it until I agreed to play tug, as per our usual routine), still completely unconcerned with the fleeing hare. That. Was. Awesome!

I know! See, I found the stick!

In other news, reason #4018 for why this place just doesn't feel like home no matter how many years I live here: wild animals aren't wild. Plus, they're really stupid. We have hares. deer, etc back home, but you can go years between seeing one even if you go out in the forest every day. Here they're everywhere, and they don't bother running away until long after it'd really be too late - if they bother running away at all. Plus they often stop to pose - to make sure we've really seen them and prepared ourselves to hunt them - before they set off... What is wrong with them?! This is not normal prey behavior! And it's not like they're not hunted here, every moron with 15 minutes to spare one Sunday a month calls himself a hunter... It drives me nuts, and not even just because of the unnecessary temptations for Monster, but mainly because it's so wrong. It's like the animals around here are broken... Someone broke the wildlife!