An outing with John

We had a family (Tetsu, me and John) adventure yesterday when we took John on a car day trip!  We had tried this once a few months after John joined our family but it was only semi successful.  Back then we'd put John in a wired kennel which he DID NOT LIKE and that resulted in him growling and snapping and lunging at us every time we looked at him.  He also got car sick on that trip and we were in stunned shock that this dog wasn't going to behave like Choco and Shoko before him had behaved.

John has been with us about two years now.  He may have changed a bit but more likely Tetsu and I now know what he is willing to do and not willing to do.  We can read his facial expressions and judge if he is in a bad mood or not and we are more forgiving of his temper.  In two years I've learned that John will ride in the car (happily) if he isn't in a kennel and he is much more accepting of me handling him than of Tetsu.

 At any rate, we decided to try and take John with us to a far off park entailing an hour or so drive.  It is getting cool enough that John could be left in the car for a bit if we wanted to eat lunch out (we didn't) or make a stop at a store (we did).  Our trip also wasn't so vital that if John started to get car sick we could still just turn around and come home...  So we loaded John in the car (he growled when Tetsu got in the driver's seat) and off we went.

John DOESN'T have free run of the backseat...  I hooked him up to the headrest so that he wouldn't be able to lean too far out of the window.  He could barely get his chin on the rolled down window (he was standing up as high as he could get) but he enjoyed looking out every time we stopped at a signal.  While the car was moving I think it got too windy for him.

I'd thrown his blanket in the back and John was content to sleep or get treats from me who would feed him from over my shoulder.

Another photo of John enjoying the sights.

The park that we went to was in a pottery town and besides having wide spaces for families to play there is a museum and also an area of the forest called the Forest of Magician's Clay which has many objects of pottery art in among the trees and hills.  

We didn't go too far in but we stopped at a couple permanent exhibits.  

I love all the pottery birds in this wild setting.

This was called "the Forest's Guard-dog" (see the sign at the right) and there was a clever addition to the sign saying that the guard-dog had escaped and people entering the forest should be careful.

John's a good guard-dog!  Doesn't fit the collar though.

John loved the sights and the smells, he was friendly with all the other dogs strolling around the park and though we kept close to the edges of the paths John wasn't even aggressive towards all the people there.  Perfectly well behaved!

Except when we got back in the car and he started growling at Tetsu again...  As I say, we are rather more forgiving than when we first got John and after a scolding and a short pout he was wagging his tail and asking for treats again.  What goes through John's little brain?

We consider our outing to be a success and hope we can try it again soon!