It Was Just a Couple of Miles

but from the moment we headed out the door, this is what I had to contend with.
Up Front, Tucker and Dazee:
And Behind, the terrified shell that is Boo-Boo:Leashes in both directions, two ahead, one behind. Six feet each, with me in the middle for a couple of miles.
Mr. Wonderful said what could I expect? After all I was obviously plotting the whole time to leave Boo-Boo in the woods at the mercy of the evil wood-goblins. Yeah. That's so me. Or, he theorized, perhaps Boo-Boo was behind as protection, guarding the rear flank, so to speak. I felt so very safe. Yes indeed, very safe.
There's a wood road, more traveled this past year than in the twenty prior. It used to be an overgrown dirt track through the forest, populated by squirrels, moose, deer, and the occasional ATV or teenagers in a pickup with a full cooler, or human on foot (I know because I was one of them). Then someone put in new long and fancy road, which meant trucks up and down the hill about every fifteen minutes from 7am-5pm carrying rock and gravel for about a week straight. Then the loggers came, and for a while there was tremendous noise and then four or five 18 wheelers a day, up and back down again, stacked high with logs. They've dwindled gradually over the year to one a day and lately none. I decided it was time for me, like the deer and the moose and the squirrel, to tread back cautiously on tip-toe and scope things out. It may be that my trepidation about what the loggers may have done telegraphed to the dog causing him to be obsessive, neurotic and terrified. This isn't a management company. This is a logging operation. Strip, sell and move on. Or it might have just been because the dog is...obsessive, neurotic and terrified.
The good news is the pond is still there. There's no trees on one side of it...but there are trees on this side still. And although one road has been improved to the point that it's practically paved, the other is still it's overgrown, leaf-strewn self.
We did not go all the way to where the majority of the trees were taken out. My husband refers to it in language I cannot use on internet. He and one neighbor have alluded to it's being a bit of a disaster out there. I won't find out for a while. I can't get Owen (Boo-Boo) past the pond for now.
Dazee is all truly a dog now.She found a puddle and walked right in. Owen and Tucker stared at me blandly - "Shouldn't you DO something about that dog over there? It looks kind of stuck." Note mud on legs? What I didn't capture on film was her bouncing in circles in the quick-sand of the muck she'd strolled into, trying desperately to get free of the sucking ooze. It was hysterical, and when I stopped laughing I retrieved her from it. Once liberated, she shook violently and trotted off as if nothing had ever happened.
We headed back along the road less traveled. And as soon as we turned the cornerthree dogs in front, all the way home. That's my Boo.