Dogs

We had a free afternoon and wandered down to our local woods for a bit of a run around. Marisca wasn't entirely convinced - she didn't like falling over onto the twigs, and she did quite a lot of falling - she seems to have lost her land legs a bit recently.

We had a difficult dog incident while there. We were sitting together on a fallen branch having a bit of a rest, when an exuberant Staffordshire Terrier came bounding over. As usual it stopped a little distance away so we did our usual pointing at the dog, saying dog, patting our legs in the baby sign for dog, and watching Marisca do the same. Unfortunately it decided to be even friendlier, and came running over and bounced up onto Marisca's chest, pushing her backwards off the log. I'm not entirely sure what happened next. I was on my feet and shouting and running at the dog, must have been enough to confuse it long enough to back off a pace or two, and Elspeth picked a wailing Risky up. It took a while to calm her but she was fine physically, and when a couple of older and slower dogs came running along a little later she was still happy to point them out, although didn't like it when the wolfier one came up close, even in the safety of my arms.

I was really shaken by it. In retrospect, I'd clocked that the dog had a muzzle, and don't recall any growling, so I'm sure it was playfulness from the dog rather than aggression. But there were certainly a few seconds when I didn't know that and just had to protect my daughter. We're also a bit worried about potentially making her scared of dogs as she grows up. We're trying to avoid that happening, but an incident like this could set her off. Certainly if a dog the size of me ran over and knocked me over backwards, I'd be nervous of them in the future. Anyway, dogs aside, here are a few of the photos from earlier in the walk, including one mid-trip.