We had lots of about-turns on our walk this evening. Started off heading in one direction, me with Willow and J with Shadow. I turned a corner in front, and the two nasty dogs of the village came hurtling out of a door and straight towards us. I shouted to J to turn around and go back the way he'd come, whilst I went into damage limitation mode, keeping my lead loose so Willow could react as she wanted. The dogs stopped before getting to us, and for a change their owner was there, to grab hold of them and let us turn away. Willow was great, constantly looking to me throughout, bless her. So, we changed plans on where to go, and headed back up the road to another of our usual places. As we approached the end of the road, I saw that there were two unknown dogs already walking there. Both our two were still on edge, so we decided not to even try to do any work on doggy desensitisation, and so doubled-back up a different path. We saw those two dogs pass by where we had been, so we took a higher path to get us back onto that second route. About 400m along, and we saw one of the local farmers walking up the hill. This can only mean one thing - he's calling his goats in for the night. Not something we need to get caught in the middle of - 50 stampeding goats running by us! So, a fourth change of direction, back the way we had come and up into the forest. We then proceeded to have a lovely time doing lots of hunting for treats in the patches of snow, and matted pine needles. It might not have been the walk we planned, but the dogs had a thoroughly good session of human unpredictability with turn-about walks, and they stuck to us like glue
