walking the dogs part one

We took the dogs on a walk on Sunday afternoon. It was a lovely late afternoon, temperatures in the 70's. Mostly sunny skies with enough clouds to make it interesting. Great day for a walk. Turns out it was a very eventful walk...

It started like every walk does, with Abe spiraling out of control excitement over somebody touching a leash. Mojo is very hyper too, but he doesn't leap into the air and spin around . Abe is a couple feet tall, and I am 5'7", and when he is excited, he jumps up and looks me right in the eye. Mojo, on the other hand, doesn't bother with heights. He just shreds our kneecaps with this bizarre stiff-legged pawing at us. Moj's paws are like steel encased in sandpaper, so this is really quite unpleasant. See how exciting this walk is? And we haven't even made it out the door yet...

The clouds were really great -- I love living on a plain surrounded by mountains. There's always a cool shot...

We went down to the path along the wash. Before we got to the wash, while we were walking along the street, this kid looked over his backyard wall at us...Abe noticed him and went bananas. I frankly couldn't blame Abe, because it was very strange -- this kid didn't say anything, he just stared at us. All we could see of him was his head. Mojo didn't know what Abe was barking at, but he was all hyper because he must protect the Abe. Which causes problems. More of that later...

Mojo shaking...

We looped the dogs' leashes together...that way they absorb some of the pulling and give our poor shoulders a break. I was surprised that Abe was able to yank Mojo around. Usually Moj is the one pushing Abe around. I didn't think Abe would have been strong enough to pull Mojo away from an interesting bush.

These four photos show just how
impossible it is for my dogs to look noble and non-goofy for even a few seconds...I mean, look -- the first two photos, both of them look normal and you know, of above average dog intelligence. But then their real doofus personalities shine through.

Really you should enlarge this third one. Moj looks like an idiot.
He should be embarrassed.

Shortly after this demonstration of his true self, Mojo stepped on a chunk of cholla.

(apparently he did not check out my Weekly Winners and thus missed a very important lesson --never kick a cholla! (I would like you all to know that this is my mother-in-law's shoe. I have never had a large chunk of spiny plant stuck to me. Yet. The individual spines, sure, a bunch of them, but never a chunk like this. Yet.)
Note the large chunk of cholla in Mojo's paw, Mojo's noble suffering, and the way Abe's tail is curved up over the Moj's head.

Cholla spines are a bugger. They have barbs that make it really painful to pull out. And since Mo had stepped on big chunk of it, there were lots of spines in his paw. And because we thought Mo had learned his lesson about cacti spines, we stopped bothering with taking a leatherman tool along on walks, so I got to pull all those spines out of his paw, and then I got to pull some of them out of my hand. Can I get a Woot?

Okay. So that's part one of our adventurous walk. Part two has violence and humor, amazing skies, more spiny (but less personally painful) plants. So y'all come back now, ya hear?