Stupidity

For some of our walks we use those extending leashes.  Yeah, yeah, I know a lot of good dog trainers despise them.  They train the dog to pull, be in charge, etc.  Yeah, I know all that, and I'll admit that Luna in particular has lousy leash skills , but if we go for a walk down the road, we are going for a change of scenery for the dogs and some exercise for us.  We want to keep walking at a decent clip, so this way the dogs get a chance to pee and smell and pee and smell, and, okay,..... that's enough of the peeing.... and they have enough free rein that they get to be a dog, and we get a bit of aerobic exercise.  Just to clarify, we are walking in a rural area; no sidewalks, acreages, not a lot of traffic, and basically no other people or dogs walking down the road.

Due to my lack of paying attention, Luna had a 'fence fight' with a neighbourhood dog that usually comes barking down to his property line, and one that Luna is always looking out for before we get there.  Anyway, there actually was no fence between them, but they are lunging and snapping and snarling at each other, no contact being made, just a lot of 'displaying'.  She is much worse when she is on leash.   That whole thing of 'well I am trapped here on leash, so the best defense is a good offense, so I had better look big and tough and scare this dog off.'  We have done a lot of work with the 'look at that game', and she is much improved from when we first got her.  Like I said, it was my inattention that allowed this incident to escalate.  So Luna is flopping around like a 40 lb killer whale at the end of the leash. I realized after it was all over that all I had to do was back up onto the road pulling the leash, and I would have pulled her away.  I guess I was not thinking, and I was trying to get her back closer to me.  Since the leash was taut and under a lot of tension, there was no way I could get any slack, so I grab the thin part of the leash and start pulling, still while she is flailing away at the end.  SOOOO NOT THINKING:(  So in the end after the other dog's owner has dragged him away, I look at my hands and I have major rope burn, down to the flesh in spots, and they felt just like they had been burnt with heat.  Thank goodness we are only five minutes from home.

Once at home I ran them under cold water, and then held ice cubes for a while.  Some polysporin applied and bandaged as best I can.  On my left hand the last three fingers have bandaids around them, as well as the thumb.  The right hand has the most severe gouge on the edge of the palm below the little finger.  There was a blister on one finger tip.    So far they feel pretty good, so hopefully there won't be any infection.  The hardest thing is though that just about every thing I do involves getting my hands wet or dirty.  Sure rubber gloves, or those blue nitrile ones work for a while, but inevitably they either start to leak, or are just too clumsy for the job at hand.  I've just been trying to pit cherries in the nitrile gloves.  I thought I was doing well, but I must have put a hole in the thumb, as my thumb was wet, and that bandaid came off.  Think I'll leave it off for a while, as other than the whole layer of skin missing, it looks a fairly decent, albeit a little cherry juice stained.

Hopefully that lesson will remain imprinted on my brain, and my first bad experience with an extending leash will be my last.  I hope I'm not a slow learner:(