One thing I looked forward to doing when I retired was going fishing in the middle of the week. However, in the seven weeks since I retired, I have only gone fishing once. I do not know if this says more about my priorities or about how busy I am. It is probably both. My priority when I retired was to write, hoping to finish my novel. I am making progress, but I have also been extremely busy with other things. One of the other things was having cataract surgery. This consumed two to three weeks with the surgery and time for my vision to clear. Then it was time to put in the garden. I had to replace two of my raised beds and hoped to add a third. I replaced the two beds, but I did not have enough dirt to fill the third, though I placed it. I finished planting last week. Now that those things are complete, I should have time to go fishing. But I promised another Bailey story.
After Bailey broke my wife’s leg, I walked her, and took her to obedience classes. Bailey usually gets at least two walks each day, morning, and afternoon. While I worked from home, this was easy to do much like my current routine. I would take her to a park a few blocks from the house where we would walk around it. When I went back to work, I needed to walk her before I left the house at 6:30 in the morning. This meant I was walking her at around 5:30 AM. During the summer this is not an issue because it is light out. But later in the year it is dark.
The park is next to a floodway that runs North of our house. To the East, the floodway runs by a large open space, Austin Bluffs. It runs down and empties into Monument creek. This is a highway for wildlife like deer and coyotes, and occasionally a bear or moose.
The lower parking lot is next to the floodway. There is a city owned swimming pool next to the lot. Above the pool is a large open field with a baseball field on one end and playground on the other. Up a hill from the field, are tennis courts and another parking lot. One fall morning I was walking Bailey at the park just before sunrise. It was just light enough to see large objects. Bailey was off leash and we were crossing the field. Suddenly, Bailey took off running, and I saw a coyote chasing her. I called Bailey, but she did not stop or come. I tried to run after them, but they were too fast. All I thought was, I have lost our dog. If the coyote did not get her, I would never find her in the dark. I continued to call for her as I walked back to the parking lot, but she did not respond. When I got to the lot, Bailey was at the car and the coyote was not in sight. Though thrilled to see me, she could hardly wait to get in the car and go home. Since then, we do not walk in that park early in the mornings. We go to a park with more lights, or we walk around the neighborhood.
It surprises me when I think about how smart Bailey was to go to the car and wait for me. She is highly intelligent. She is also very fast and just like the Roadrunner, she avoided the Wiley Coyote. If you enjoy stories about Bailey, leave a comment and sign up to receive updates on new posts.