Sunday, November 09, 2008

Our grand time at the park

I mentioned in Friday's post that we were going to take the girls walking at the park. We did, and it was a good time. We met Chris's friend and former co-worker Clinton, introduced him to Daisy and Maggie, and set out. The girls were pretty hyper at first, because they don't go for walks very often and aren't officially leash trained, but after about 10-15 minutes, and a dog swap (Daisy is too much a handful for Chris, especially when he's talking while he walks), they settled down and really enjoyed themselves.

The path around the park is about 4 miles... it took us around an hour to walk it, which is good, because they say corgis should get 30-60 minutes of exercise a day. Because of their short, stubby legs, a comfortably brisk pace for me is also a quick pace for them, so I'm sure it was a good aerobic workout for them. A dog of their size but of a less athletic breed might have been tired out, but these girls were bred to herd sheep, cattle and horses, so they have lots of energy to burn! They were smiling for pretty much the entire walk.

We had a little trouble, in that Daisy barked and lunged at the first dog we passed, but I kept her in hand and we only had minor pulling the two or three other times that we walked by other dog owners. She also shied away from rollerbladers. Being a country dog, I'm sure she'd never seen anyone on skates. Maggie, meanwhile, was just perfectly content to be out and about and didn't seem to have trouble with anyone or anything.

Because it's such a short distance to and from the park (walking distance, really, but walking there, around, and back would be too much with the shape we're currently in), instead of crating them, I took the center seat in the back and held their collars while they sat on either side of me. They were very well-behaved and didn't even try to get up front with Chris. Daisy seemed a little scared or uncomfortable with the car ride, but Maggie loved it.

After we got home and fed the girls their dinner, they slept on the office chair for five hours. Those pups were all tuckered out!

It was such a success that we're hoping to go on similar walks 2-3 times a week. We could all use the exercise, and the girls need to learn how to walk well on a leash. Besides, it's so much fun when someone walks by, smiles, and says "Aw, corgis!"

3 comments:

  1. Wow, five hours! They really were tired! Good thing you bought them that chair to sleep in!

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  2. Yes, we had great forethought on that... we ordered it before we even knew we were getting two dogs ;)

    They actually do sleep a lot anyway. They alternate between long bouts of sleeping and short bouts of frenzied activity. Right now they're both curled up on the chair, cute as can be.

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  3. Oh, like toddlers. When I first got sick, I did that, too, but I'm better at regulating my energy these days.

    (My friend with nine cats mentioned a problem with posting on Blogger on his LJ so I told him the problem and told him to turn in a support request so they won't think I'm nuts. Then two other people posted saying they had the same problem, but assumed it was Blogger. So I told them to put in support requests.)

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