I spent a little while
this morning trying to find a whistle. I have been blowing a whistle
every time I give Fudge one of his treats, and I have this theory
that he will associate the sound of the whistle with getting a treat.
The idea being that when we are out and he is off the lead, if I’m
having trouble getting him back again I can blow the whistle. He will
think it is treat time and will come charging up to me. And so will
be easy meat to be captured and put back on the lead.
However the entire plan
hinges on having a whistle to blow. We’d lost it. Eventually we
found one left over from last Christmas, so I took that with us and
gave it a try when he was off the lead. It seemed to work. Well,
there was no “seemed” about it. It worked. He was charging
about fifty yards away. I blew the whistle. He came back to me, sat,
and lifted his paw (which is the only trick he can do). We did
this a few times, and even when he was on the lead I blew the whistle
and then gave him a treat a few times. He does seem to have got the
idea.
I took Fudge on a
geocaching episode today. It is three days since I last did any, and
withdrawal symptoms were setting in. But this wasn’t finding them.
This was geocache maintenance time. One of my caches was waterlogged
and needed a little bit of T.L.C. And another one had simply gone
missing and needed replacing. That took half an hour, but Fudge
needed more of a walk than that, so we took the scenic route to the
southernmost parts of town where (until today) there have been
precious few geocaches.
We spent a couple of
hours setting the caches for the “Park Farm Pootle”, a
series of six geocaches around the Park Farm estate. In doing so we
quadrupled the geocaches on that estate. They are all relatively easy
to find; aimed at beginners and families. A bit of light hearted fun.
I hope that the punters have as much fun seeking them out as I did
finding places to hide them. “Hide and Seek” isn’t an
easy game to get just right. Some hides are just plain obvious, and
some are just impossible.
It’s been asked why I
chose the Park Farm estate for my third series of caches. There are
quite a few reasons. Firstly the area didn’t have many, and that is
a rarity in the Ashford area. Secondly they are all accessible
without getting caked in mud, and that takes some doing at the
moment. And thirdly (but possibly the main reason) it that it is a
very transparent attempt to convert one of my loyal readers over to
the dark side of geocaching. (You know who you are!)
Whilst
out, I saw some old friends. They didn’t recognise me at first –
it’s been some years. But they looked through the face fur and soon
saw it was me. When "Daddies
Little Angel TM"
and "My Boy TM" were
toddlers we struck up friendships with other young families. In the
intervening years Debbie and Nigel moved to Maidstone, moved to
America, moved all over the place. But we kept in touch through the
wonders of the Internet. And it was good to catch up with them today
And also whilst out I
read a very interesting notice. When I walk Fudge round and about I
can never let him off the lead as much as I’d like because there
are horses in lots of the fields. It seems that many of these fields
belong to the local council, and the horses are there without council
permission. One such notice was saying that if the horses in a
particular field were still there in a few days’ time then the
horses would be removed. The notice was rather vague about exactly
where the horses would be removed to. Presumably to a field belonging
to Folkestone or Maidstone council, and left to run riot there?
And so home where we had
a spot of lunch and I then did all the logging of the caches I'd set.
That took a little while. And then I watched a film I'd recorded onto
the SkyPlus box a few days ago. The
Scouting Book for Boys looked as though it had promise, but
turned out to be a disappointment.
"My Boy TM"
came home and told me that Fudge looked worn out. And then I had a
flurry of emails. THe series of caches I'd set had been given the
thumbs-down. The reviewer thought that one was too close to a play
park and had disqualified the lot. He said that if I moved the
offending problem cache he'd reconsider the lot.
This reviewer boils my
piss because he is inconsistent in his application of the rules. the
cache I set today was quite a long way away from the play park.
Certainly further away than three other caches the same chap has
allowed near other play parks. So I zoomed back down to Park Farm and
moved the cache. And re-submitted everything.
With "er indoors
TM" out bowling for the evening I watched
another film I'd recorded. Zebra
Crossing was another disappointment. as was the non-publication
of all the work I'd put into making the geocache trail today...
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