Today someone posted a video showing a German Shepherd running through a pile of leaves after someone raked them up. It reminded me so much of a story about my dog Chester, the rather large Irish setter that we got right as we got married. So it was over 35 years ago.
Our house that we had in the small town we lived in then had 2 maple trees out front and the neighbors had very large maples that were very old. Because of all these trees we got a lot of leaves in our front yard. I remember one time I raked them up into a big pile and then I hid inside of the pile. My wife let our dog out and he ran around sniffing stuff like he always did, because he was ruled by his nose. When he came near the pile I jumped up and growled with my arms up in the air like a monster. You would think this huge dog wouldn't be afraid of anything and want to protect us but that didn't happen! He ran away yelping all the way around the house to the backyard where he stopped and started barking. He was such a wussy it was hilarious! After he regained his composure in the backyard he slowly walked up to where I was hiding barking. Normally your dog is supposed to make you feel safe but that event put everything in perspective.
Irish Setters have a bit of a cowardly streak in them. I used to go trout fishing and a stream called French Creek. I used to take Chester when I went on a weekday because there was never anyone there and he could just run and run. One time I was very energetic and hiked way upstream further than I'd ever been before. This stream was really long. I got to a spot where there was a barb wire fence and on the other side was herd of cattle but they were far away from the stream so I just went through the fence and started fishing. My goofy dog ran over to a cow that had a calf and started barking at it. I don't know why because he usually didn't bark at livestock. So I look at see him barking and the mother cow put her head down and pawed at the ground. She was going to protect her calf. Then she charged him. Of course now he was scared and was running away and this cow was chasing him. Instead of running to safety he decided to run over by me so I could protect him. So here is huge cow with her head down charging me now. It's not easy to go through a barb wire fence in a hurry but I did. He followed me through the fence and we were safe. I scolded him over and over for running to me when he was in a dangerous situation. He was never very good with livestock and there are more stories I can tell about him. Today I don't have the energy left to do it. Maybe some other time.
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