Peaceful turned Eventful

Everything lined up perfect today for me to get out for another length of the road walk with Linus. The weather was beautiful, I was on the mail route today and done early and everything went smooth with chores so was done that early too. I figured no saddle or anything today just a nice quiet and peaceful walk. HA! We did have a brilliant outing that had me jumping up and down...on the inside. Outwardly I'm pretty much always calm no matter what may be going on...not sure where it comes from but it is a blessing!!!

From the start Linus was again a perfect gentleman today. I think part of this might be because now that he is out of the round pen and back into a small pasture he is getting more exercise throughout the day which is great! We had a pretty uneventful walk in the beginning and at one point I thought we were going to make it to the end of the road without encountering a single car. Then a bus approached at the end of side road that meets the road we were on...so I said "Oooh Linus....we might be about to meet our first bus.....yep...we are...OK" Thank goodness the bus driver was a friend of mine, he actually used to be my bus driver and his daughter has horses so he knew to slow down. He actually slowed down too much and silly Linus wanted to approach the bus to check it out!! He was so outstanding with the big noisy school bus that I wish I could have had someone there to take our picture. I stopped him after it passed and gave him a good scratch and told him what a good boy he was.

Then, 2 houses down, the homeowner, Mike, was putting out his garbage and recycling for the next day. He was unloading it from the back of his noisy diesel truck. He had went to his front door when we were coming up the road so I expected on of their kids wanted to see Linus. I was right. He asked if I had a minute, then his wife Sharon came to the door with their youngest son. She was amazed that Linus wasn't scared of the truck and then burst out laughing when he stuck his head in the open window!! Then, as you can see in the pics below he had to investigate their recycling bins too! She also laughed at this and then doubled over when he started pulling bottles and cans out. I picked up their bottles, promised in the future to take the boys for a ride and we continued on. At the time we continued on a few vehicles met us and we were at a T junction in the road so were in the middle of them all and it didn't bother Linus at all. All of this goes on and then he spooks when some ice covered branches were making rattling noises when the wind picked up...they weren't too scary though because on the way back he forgot to be spooked!

We visited his favourite mailbox on the road - a red barn, and then crossed the main road so we could go over the bridge at the beginning of the next road. He handled the bridge better than ever. It's not really a scary bridge but it makes a hollow sort of noise when you cross over it. We also met a man out walking. He was a bit nervous of Linus but when Linus stuck his nose at him he kind of had to pet him! He was good with this though and said Linus was pretty.

On the way back he stopped to watch the traffic on the main road, I didn't rush him because this is good for him. And, in the first picture below you can see him standing comfortably in a puddle...this time last year he would never have done that! He would have jumped over it or danced around it. Certainly not walk right through it as if it its just part of the road.

He stopped again to investigate the recycling and garbage and of course any mailboxes he thought needed a sniff.

Then we met the only "not nice" people on the road. They were walking their even more not nice dogs. Linus of course wanted to meet them but I told him they were not nice and we were going to keep going. He wasn't too pleased at this but obliged. And then, to have even more excitement on our walk my Dad came up the road and stopped for a chat. Linus proved again traffic is no big deal and stuck his head in the window of the truck and then in the bed of the truck. I didn't know what tools might be back there though so I pulled him out and said we had to keep going before he got me in trouble.

The rest of our walk was peaceful. We had such a great time and Linus ended up encountering so many obstacles and conquered them all. I was super duper proud of him today!

Beating the big scary puddles who plagued him last year!

I guess they didn't sort their recycling well enough and Linus had to do it for them!

I loved Susan's silhouette pictures so much I had to try for some of my own...not quite the best angle and I had my bulky barn clothes on...Linus is on the right, lol