Molly's field walk for today

Husband is usually the Mollywalker. 

Today he has gone to do some business. 

It's a perfect walking day: cool, sunny with passing clouds, breezy. 

I fleeced up, filled my kangaroo pouch with training treats, and set out down the fields. Nice slow pace. Molly can run hither, thither and yon at will. I follow, or lead (depending on how many loops back around me Molly's done), at my own pace. 

These are recently cut hayfields, hard on the ankles. Wobble, wobble.

The yellow line is the trip out. All downhill. Notice how there are no stops?

The trip back is the pretty hot(!) pink one, all uphill, with yellow stars where I stopped . . . strictly to admire the view. 

From Molly's point of view, the highlights were, in chronological order:

1. crossing the path of some animal only seconds after it had passed that way (I saw a tail tip but no body)
2. rolling in a nice fragrant grassy mouse nest left open to the elements by the passing haying operations
3. coming back and sitting for a treat when I clapped my hands (I tried not speaking to her throughout the walk to see how that would go . . . it went well) or when she felt like checking in with me
4. finding a place that smelled strongly of Someone Else . . . to which she enacted "Poop On You!" It's her field, after all. 
5. catching sight of a rodent near one of the edge-of-field lilacs and hopping on it, killing it.

If those highlights were in order of excitement value, number five would head the list. She carried the corpse back to the front lawn and threw it over her shoulders for ten minutes before she ate its head. I don't know what it was. It was white, so not a regular ol' field mouse. Longish legs. Maybe a small rat?

For me, the highlights were, in order of value:

1. seeing Molly being A Dog Living A Dog's Life
2. sitting on that stump
3. leaning on the hay bale
4. and sitting in the sun at the picnic table when we got back.