I begin mile one all too often trailed by the long legged beagle things that live in the opposite direction up the road. That's right, the guy whose dogs have attacked our stock, killed one of our cats, sent the other for an extended stay on the roof, & generally made a nuisance of themselves are still around. Animal control makes almost weekly visits to this guy but there does not seem to be much that can be done unless the dogs are caught red-pawed.
I lose these dogs once I get to a row of yards with fenced yards & dogs in them. One has an elderly back mutt of roughly lab-size. It was out once (someone must have left a gate open) & I ended up crossing the street because it clearly did not want me crossing its driveway, but I would not flag this as dumb-assery; anyone can forget to close a gate once in three years.
After the old black not-quite-a-lab, there is a pair of corgis who are kind of hilarious. Their house is off the road but down a straight drive, so I can see them clearly, barking theirs head, off running slightly faster than me, but not much. They invariable stop ten feet before their closed gate & make sure I know this is their house & then they run home again, as fast as they can.
It stays quiet until I turn on to the dirt road & start past the larger horse farms. Farm number two has what has to be a full blooded Cane Corso. This thing is HUGE. He (yes he, no question) has only barked at me once (I passed another runner & we said "morning" or some such & maybe he was just saying "morning" too but I could live a happy life not hearing that dog-voice again). He has the gravely bark that goes with an Ancient Roman dog of war. Mostly he does the other thing he is bred to do, he courses. He easily keeps pace with me, inside his fence, escorting me from one end of his territory to the other.
Another turn & another largely dog-free stretch, mostly because the houses move further off the road, until I make my final turn & move past Grayson, The Slinker. His family really does call him Grayson, I call him The Slinker because he once climbed to the top of a five foot gate, crawled through the gap at the top & slunk after me. When I turned & yelled "HEY!" he took off back into his yard. I saw his people & told them & the very next day there were bungee cords wrapped across the gap & a few weeks later a new, much narrower-gapped gate. Grayson lived with the most majestic Doberman I ever saw. I don't see him anymore; I suspect he is sleeping away/has slept away his old age because...Grayson now has two Rottweiler puppies keeping him busy. I wish they made less noise, but they stay in their (fenced) yard; some days they do just sit & watch me go by, no noise at all.
While I am on the road I might meet the guy next door who I am pretty sure has undiagnosed Asperger's walking his big male German Shepherd whom he adores & is pretty much the only way to connect with him. Also the dog is wonderful to behold, beautifully cared for & trained. I may also meet the other German Shepherd guy who USED to walk his dog off-leash until it took of after a little girl on a bicycle (she's fine, I'm not sure she knew it even happened, but her father saw & chewed a hole through every ear he could find & actually got the sheriff to issue a ticket-no easy feat) & now clips the leash on grumbling about leash laws whenever he sees someone heading towards them, because the rest of us using public roads is a huge inconvenience to him.
Finally, I might meet K****** who walks a faux-German Shepard she found abandoned in the parking lot at K-Mart & a boxy headed lover boy who look like they could yank her arms right off her body but actually seem more interested in tripping her than anything else. We usually talk a bit, often about those first long-legged beagle things (the owner CLAIMS they are Walker Hounds but they are the scaredest, scrawniest, most swayed-back walkers I have ever seen) as they often trail her home, giving her the credit for not scooping up after her dogs, which she does do but if you see a lady walking two dogs & a pile of poop a minute later it is hard not to connect the two.
I never see Bishop anymore. After that documented encounter, I saw him once or twice being walked on a leash, but it has been well over a year since the last Bishop sighting. I pass his house twice on my 5-6 times a week run, so I am confident if he still lived there I would know. I guess when it became clear they could not just send him out the door (they were new to the neighborhood in those days & plenty of people not from around here think all dogs roam free in the country), he had to be relocated.
I meet a DADO fairly regularly (usually the same one, yep the guy with the free-range mongrel hounds), but I am often impressed by how many I DON'T meet. There are many red-flag dog breeds on my route (& in my house: a German Shephard, a pit-looking mix, two mini-dachshunds -the bitingest breed of all & a cocker spaniel, another breed no stranger to nips), but mostly people who get "dangerous" dogs know it & take care. It is the people who think their little angels would never hurt a fly that are the real problem.
