My dogs and I are lucky – we have places we can go for off leash walks. Central Ohio can be very hilly and so there are moments where the dogs our briefly out of sight behind a ridge or circling some plants. And then they’re back in sight.
But on one walk this year, Viktor didn’t come back in sight. After another minute or two, I started calling him. He didn’t re-appear in the expected time frame. I continued to call as I went the direction where he was last headed.
And soon – he came into sight. But he wasn’t running in his usual way, he was struggling to get back to me because he was carrying an apparently heavy object.
When he got up close I could see that it appeared to be a sizable wheel of cheese. This created more problems because he guards food from others and by this point Tonks and Griffin were both very interested in the food too.
I leashed Viktor, removed the cheese, took a sample with me, kept the others from eating the cheese and we continued on our walk. We didn’t visit that area for a few weeks.
Looking back, I’m impressed at how Viktor didn’t just stop to try and eat the whole thing – it appeared he had started to come back when I called but had struggles due to his small size and the weight of the cheese.
He didn’t eat enough to be unwell and for him, it was probably just a really special day!