"STOP, Kona"

    Because Kona always lets her instincts over-ride common sense, we pretty much always have to keep her on a leash.  One scent of a wild animal, the sight of a person or a vehicle that is unexpected, and Kona goes berserk, erupting into loud barking, and sprinting like a crazed cheetah toward the offending object.  When that happens, her sense of hearing shuts off and she becomes totally oblivious to our yelling for her to stop.

    We do realize that as a young dog, she does need to run and she loves doing it, but she is so fast that there is no way she can “open up” with me trying to run beside her while on a leash, so we try to take her somewhere that we can let her off of the leash and be free, but safe at the same time.  The airport is such a place, but we can’t use it now that there is so much deep snow on the ground.  The other place we can let her go is Horseshoe Lake Road, which is plowed and a confined space with deep snow on each side.

    Lately it seems that every time we go there and take her off the leash, someone else, or a vehicle shows up.  Kona’s keen eyesight spots the intruder almost immediately, and because we have let her off the leash, she rockets toward the foreign object barking like crazy.

    Yesterday when we went to Horseshoe Lake we discovered that although the road was plowed, the parking area was not, and so we just parked along the road.  We got out, freed Kona, and walked down the road.  When we had walked the half of a kilometer (1/3rd of a mile) to the end of the road and turned around, Kona spotted OUR car, sitting on the side of the road, way off in the distance,.  She thought it was an approaching vehicle and immediately she jolted and began racing toward it, barking her objections like a maniac.

    Fortunately, she was in no danger from a moving vehicle, and eventually she slowed to a walk as we ran to catch up to her.  I took the photo using my zoom lens when we got closer to our car.

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