Doggy obstacle course

Yesterday, we took the dogs to Coatham Woods for a nice evening walk. We haven't been for quite a while, so we knew they'd enjoy themselves.

First up, was the ramp/tunnels. Both dogs were happy to run through the tunnels first go, but the ramps were a different story at first. They did go up eventually though.

After the ramps, it's a fairly lengthy walk to the next obstacle, through a lot of long grass that both dogs enjoyed running through and sniffing about. On the way, we saw two deer run across ahead of us. Luckily the dogs did not. We've never seen deer there before, although we knew that they were there as we've seen resting places in the grass. 

The next obstacle we came to was the weaving poles. Neither dog particularly wanted to attempt these as they were too busy sniffing! But they both managed a small portion of them (no pictures of them actually weaving I'm afraid). 

The next obstacle was the box jumps, after another fairly lengthy walk. It's easy to think you've got lost between obstacles due to the distance, but if you stick to the paths made in the grass, you do eventually come to them. Ellie is more than capable of jumping, but is never inclined to when we try. Pepper is less likely to jump and nearly necked herself when she slipped on the grass yesterday (oops - she was fine though). You can only see two jumps here, but there are four and they were rather overgrown, probably due to the rain and sun we've had recently.

The next obstacle is just round the corner, but still a decent walk. 

Pepper was happy enough to walk along it for once. Ellie however...

Easily distracted by flies is the phrase, I think...

She did it eventually

After the plank, it was over the bridge and up the hill.

To the table top. Pepper was happier to pose than Ellie was. 

Next obstacle is Pepper's favourite. See if you can guess what it is. 

The water splash. I think the idea is that the dogs can cool down after running around like loonies. Ellie doesn't like to swim. However, one moment she was casually watching Pepper swim...

The next...

All we can assume is that she thought the lily pads and leaves were solid ground, as one moment she was standing on the bank and the next she'd launched herself into the water. She quickly jumped back out again, of course.

After letting Pepper swim for a while, we finally headed on to the next (and last) obstacle. Another lot of box jumps. 

Again, the dogs showed no interest in jumping them, so we didn't force it and just carried on back to the car. 

We found masses of buttercups on the way, which the dogs insisted on ruining.

Luckily, the buttercups make for a nice background for pictures. 

And there's a couple of candid shots of Ellie to finish the post off.