A few weeks back we went mountain biking, taking our dog with us. It’s a bit hard taking him in summer, as he’s a long haired dog, built for living in the snow. He still wants to come, but he has to get told No, you’re not coming today. He doesn’t understand, so just looks morose, staring longingly at the gate.
But it’s winter here, so he can run along with us, and not die of heatstroke. He sees the bikes getting loaded onto the car, and he’s very happy when he gets the call to jump in. He’s in like a flash, in case we change our mind.
Woodhill Mountain Bike Park is about 45 minutes drive from home, out in the Woodhill forest to the west of Auckland. As soon as we got there, Samson leaps out of the car, and does a runny poo right next to someone else’s car. Hmm, that’s not good. At least it’s not as bad as someone else’s dog that crapped under the picnic tables.
We head out for a good ride, stopping at a stream along the way, where Samson lies in the water, drinking it up. Later he also stops in a small pool of muddy water, drinking some of that too.
Back at the carpark, we wash the bikes down, and give him a bit of rinse off. He drinks up a bit more water. The sign says the water’s not suitable for drinking, but that doesn’t apply to dogs, right?
We get the bikes loaded up, dog installed in the back of the car, and start to pull out. Wait a second. Samson makes a bit of a funny noise, and we turn around to see he’s gone and thrown up an enormous amount of liquid. He’s a big dog, and it turns out he can hold quite a bit…looks like half of his volume has been expelled, and is covering him and the back of the car.
Luckily there’s always a blanket and a tarpaulin that he sits on in the back of the car. Very useful when he’s been at the beach. Just didn’t think it would be needed for him throwing up. Not much actually got on the car, it was mostly him that got it. Poor old fellow. He got rinsed off again before we set off. Didn’t seem to worry him much!
We then had to drive back, on a warmish day, with a lovely dog-sick aroma in the car. I managed to make myself scarce when we got home, doing something with the bikes, while Anna cleaned it up. When he’s good, he’s my/our dog, other times he’s very much Anna’s dog.