Eyes in the darkness

Sunset...it's coming...

The days are much shorter now, winter is well on its way. The darkness is broken up by some street lamps and my own head lamp. I start to run through the grass on my usual trail. The dogs are ecstatic as they've been cooped up in the house all day while I was at work. At some point Czari passes me and jumps up so high past me I'm worried he'll jump over me. Zuz is a furry little blur in the grass. After about an hour of prancing around we're on our way back. I thought I saw some shadows moving a while back so we're walking a lot slower and more attentively now. Poochies are on leashes since we're approaching the road.  Czari's walking nicely right next to me, scanning the area, my hand brushes his head accidentally once in a while. Zuz is keeping up behind me. I'm scanning the shadows with my headlamp, just in case the coyotes decide to pay us a visit. Its not very likely since I haven't seen them in this area for a very long time...but you never know.

As fate would have it, today is my lucky day! There, in the grass, something is shinning back at me, a pair of eyes...I shout out at it and alert Czari. He's staring in the shadows trying to figure out what I'm looking at, there's no wind and the eyes are far away. I can't see a body, but it's staring straight at us and its bigger than a coyote. I wait and it advances forward a little bit, I shout out again. Czari's starting to pull on the leash. I pet him a bit and wait. I learned the trick to always stay calm a while ago, I'm pretty good at it by now. The eyes take one more step and then the head lifts, it turns around and walks calmly away. From the back and the walk I can finally tell what it is...a big deer. It vanishes into the grasses in a couple seconds and I relax. Czari's not completely convinced. We start walking towards the car and he's still restless, pulling once in a while. He's controlling himself well though, so I decide to let him go investigate. The deer is long gone.

I expected him to charge ahead like usual as soon as I tell him go, but he starts walking forward slowly and low to the ground. He stops to sniff the wind, but there's just not that much wind. He walks again closer and stops again. Tries to sniff again...walks closer, and then jumps away suddenly a few times. Walks around the area in a circle. Then goes all the way to the spot and sniffs. I see him walk around the spot a bit and check up and down the hill. He goes to pee on a bush nearby, and then just walks back calmly and I pet him, tell him he did a good job and put him back on leash. I tell Zuzi "good job" too, because she stayed with me calmly instead of barking. She too has gotten much better are following my cues when we're hiking. She's still a little silly though...what can I say, she's just a different dog :P.

I really thought Czari was just going to go running after the deer when he realized that's what it was...Yet again I am positively surprised by my dog's innate and acquired wisdom. How he seems to just know when to charge and when to approach situations calmly and take his time to figure out what he's dealing with. Of course, each time he comes back and looks to see if I'm happy with what he did or not and each time I give feedback. That helps too. But this situation was completely new for him and he handled it very well.

As for the mystery deer, I suppose it was perplexed by our presence...figured out what we were and then decided we are not worth pursuing...though I have to say it really did look like it was about to charge me for a few seconds there, but maybe it was just curious. I guess we'll never know...