A Trip to the Country Park

We decided to take Brandy & Brinkley to the Country Park this weekend, as part of the vets recommended familiarisation program. So far they have met a couple of other dogs when we have been out walking, but this way they would see lots of ducks and geese, water, children, other dogs and maybe horses, as well as seeing lots of cars. Brandy seems to take new experiences in his stride, Brinkley is the scared one who hides behind me. We put them both in the car and drove down to Rother Valley. We knew it would be busy because it was a beautiful spring day, and this was obviously the case as we drove into the car park by the visitor centre.

Now, we know that our puppies are beautiful and cute and expected a lot of interest from people as we walked around but we had only just taken them out of the travel cage and put their leads on when the first little boy and his dad came over to speak to us and stroke the dogs. We took them down to the edge of the lake to see the ducks. The lake had a lot of ducks, swans and geese all over and the noise from them was quite incredible, but Brandy & Brinkley didn't seemed to be too upset by it. There were also lots of families feeding the ducks and they were quite happy amongst the crowd, so this was a good start.

We set off to walk along the side of the lake towards the childrens playground where we would turn around and walk back, that would take us about half an hour and was more than enough for the pups first big walk. They were into everything. They wanted to sniff every blade of grass, say hello to every dog they met, size didn't matter, and of course stop to be stroked by every one that we passed. We took them to the edge of the lake at a quiet spot and the water looked really clean so we let them have a paddle. Brinkley was straight in without a problem, Brandy showed the same dislike as when I had put them in the bath, and stood in of 1 inch of water and tried to lift as many paws out at the same time. He does not like water.

When we got back near the car park we saw a small pony walking towards us being ridden by a little girl, and her family were walking with her. This was the first time both pups showed that they were a bit frightened by what they were seeing. We stood to one side and let the group pass and then carried on to the car. We decided to call at Dad's on the way home and while we were there, Brandy & Brinkley slept the whole time - the walk had been good fun but had totally worn them out. Same again tomorrow please!