Nightlife in Morristown

We did get our night trip after all, and what an exhilarating experience!  In theory, a dog’s work should not vary form daytime to night-time, but Prada seems to be a night-owl.  I don’t know why there's a difference—my attitude, the environment, her energy level—but she works like a DREAM at night.  It’s about what I imagine going from driving a John Deer to a Mercedes Benz would be.  She even made it past a row of outdoor café diners who oohed and ahhed out her—and didn’t stop to flirt!

(Night time is still my favorite time to work with Prada.  We’re faster, more in sync, and I think it has to do with me transferring trust from my eyes to her when I really can’t see things at night.  Which, of course, means I need to spend more time occluded during the day to kick that bad habit…This is one of the chronic struggles of partially-sighted handlers:  we’re used to being allowed to use our vision instead of trusting canes or guides.)

This morning we walked Patriot's Path, a wide, graveled wooded hiking/jogging trail.  I come from a family of hikers and I love getting off-road and hitting the trails just about anywhere I am, and I wanted to take Prada on those adventures with me so we found the closest thing to a “real trail” that we could in this rather urban environment.  No big rocks or giant roots to climb over, no little creeks or drain steps splitting the path, so it was much smoother than I’m used to.  In order to protect Prada’s pads from the rough gravel we put on the booties today, and used the gentle leader ‘cause the pup was feelin’ her oats a little.

(Prada is a HORRIBLE trail dog.  She’s too distracted by flora, doesn’t understand the similarity between trails and sidwalks.  It’s a struggle to get her to acknowledge trail edges, but some of the trails I like to hike are just too rough for dogs to guide you around everything anyway.)

That afternoon I made an important discovery.  We went to go visit Solo, the cat on staff at The Seeing Eye.  Apparently it’s common practice to have a cat around at facilities like The Seeing Eye to help desensitize dogs to cats and the traditional hobby of cat chasing.  Unfortunately, these cats get desensitized, too, so the experiment isn’t perfect because you can’t see how Juno would respond to a fleeing cat.  Prada ignored Solo, for the most part, and I am fairly confident that if there be any drama with our own household demigod Mittens, it will be initiated by the cat.
(This is absolutely the case, more on that later.)