Out for a walk

Dog strolling along railway tracks brings train to a crawl in Yamanashi

How could it not be a Shiba?

This kind of reminds me of an adventure 10 years ago with Shassi. Friends and I were hiking Dodd's Narrows, which is a place of rock, ocean, islands and trees where one could watch the strait flow on by. When the herring run was on, the strait was churning with sea lions. It was the first time Shassi or I had been there, or to the house where we started from.

In my madness, I had let Shassi loose, figuring she would run with the other dogs and so stay with us. She did stay with us until after lunchtime. About an hour into the hike back, we took stock of the dogs and found that there was no Shassi. Calls and hollers rebounded into the woods - no Shassi. The best thing we could do was hike back to the house where we had left the cars and figure out what to do from there.

When we got there, who should uncurl herself from the doorstep, but Shassi. Apparently she had had enough of hiking and calmly decided to head back to await us hiking fools. We later heard from some locals that they had seen her trotting purposefully on the side of the road, heading back to the house. Keep in mind that this was the first time she had been to said house, and that via a car, so that made it even more incredible.

Note that I don't recommend this for Shibas or any dog who doesn't stick close or come when it's called. There are a lot of things in the woods who would happily make a meal out of a 20 pound dog and we're lucky that Shassi came out of the woods with nothing worse than a tick bite.