Checked up on this cache while the dog and I were nearby. It’s in fine condition and ready to find. The latch for the container is beginning to rust, but the whole thing is perfectly
serviceable. Go find it!
A lunchtime dog walk was made especially delightful by the growing warmth of the approaching British springtime. It’s really bright and pretty out, this afternoon!
The geopup and I were out running some errands this damp afternoon and figured we’d take a walk near here. Spotting the cache on our radar we took a short diversion to find this cache,
which despite not having a visitor yet this year nor for the entirety of last year is in perfect condition. A quick and easy find as cars whooshed past us, then a muddy meander back
past the drainage works and on our way.
SL. TFTC, and a pity-FP awarded simply for being a well-maintained but
under-appreciated cache.
After claiming the FTF on the new cache to the North East, the geohound and I continued our walk with a wander through thy
woods, eventually finding ourselves near this gate. I’d nearly attempted this cache during a previous visit to these woods but IIRC was dragged right past it by impatient dogs,
children, or both. 😂
Today, though, it was a QEF for the doggo and I. Fun container and a good size too, FP awarded. TFTC!
Woke this morning slightly hungover and figured a nice walk with the geopup might help me feel better. And what an opportunity: a brand new cache only a short way from home!
Jumped in the car and zipped up to Church Hanborough, parking near the cemetery/allotments because the church bells were ringing and all the parking spots nearer to the centre of thy
village were occupied by churchgoers. Walked up the paths to the GZ and had sight of the cache’s shiny container before we were even there. Retrieval was quick and easy, but we had to
wait a while before we could return it to it’s hiding place because a large group of dog walkers (one of whom was holding court on how he was confident that Donald Trump would soon
“dismantle the Deep State” 🙄) were passing.
The geohound and I braved an explore of this litter-filled GZ but couldn’t spot a cache among the copious detritus before the whiny little thing started fighting to get back to the warm
of the car and to the rest of her “pack”. Maybe next time we pass by this way.
QEF while stopped for a confort break on a long journey North from Oxford. The dog wanted to go with the others into the services, but had to stay outdoors with me and hunt for the
cache. Solid hint!
Our beloved-but-slightly-thick dog will sometimes consent to playing fetch, but one of her favourite games to play is My Ball. Which is a
bit like fetch, except that she won’t let go of the ball.
It’s not quite the same as tug-of-war, though. She doesn’t want you to pull the toy in a back-and-forth before, most-likely, giving up and letting her win1. Nor is My Ball a solo game: she’s not interested
in sitting and simply chewing the ball, like some dogs do.
I’d like to imagine the grunts and snorts she makes at about this moment actually translate to “My ball. Myyyy… ballll. Myyyyy ball! MY BALL! My… BALL!”
No, this is absolutely a participatory game. She’ll sit and whine for your attention to get you to come to another room. Or she’ll bring the toy in question (it doesn’t have to
be a ball) and place it gently on your foot to get your attention.
Your role in this game is to want the ball. So long as you’re showing that you want the ball – occasionally reaching down to take it only for her to snatch it away at
the last second, verbally asking if you can have it, or just looking enviously in its general direction – you’re playing your part in the game. Your presence and participation is
essential, even as your role is entirely ceremonial.
This might look like a game of tug-of-war, but you’ll note that my grip is just barely two-fingered. She’s not pulling, because she doesn’t need to unless I try to take the toy. This
is My Rope, she knows.
Playing it, I find myself reminded of playing with the kids when they were toddlers. The eldest in particular enjoyed spending countless hours playing make-believe games in which the
roles were tightly-scripted2. She’d tell me that, say, I was a talking badger or a grumpy
dragon or an injured patient but immediately shoot down any effort to role-play my assigned character, telling me that I was “doing it wrong” if I didn’t act in exactly the unspoken way
that she imagined my character ought to behave.
But the important thing to her was that I embodied the motivation that she assigned me. That I wanted the rabbits to stop digging too near to my burrow3 or the
princess to stay in her cage4 or to lie down in my hospital bed and await the doctor’s eventual arrival5.
Sometimes I didn’t need to do much, so long as I showed how I felt in the role I’d been assigned.
In this game, the chef was “making soup” (in the sink, apparently) and my job was to “want the soup”.
Somebody with much more acting experience and/or a deeper academic comprehension of the performing arts is going to appear in the comments and tell me why this is, probably.
But I guess what I mean to say is that playing with my dog sometimes reminds me of playing with a toddler. Which, just sometimes, I miss.
Footnotes
1 Alternatively, tug-of-war can see the human “win” and then throw the toy, leading to a
game of fetch after all.
3 “Grr, those pesky rabbits are stopping me sleeping.”
4 “I’ll just contentedly sit on my pile of treasure, I guess?”
5 Playing at being an injured patient was perhaps one of my favourite roles, especially
after a night in which the little tyke had woken me a dozen times and yet still had some kind of tiny-human morning-zoomies. On at least one such occasion I’m pretty sure I actually
fell asleep while the “doctor” finished her rounds of all the soft toys whose triage apparently put them ahead of me in the pecking order. Similarly, I always loved it
when the kids’ games included a “naptime” component.
On the way to school this morning, the 10-year-old lagged behind to build a small snowman.
On the way back, the dog saw the snowman, which wasn’t there when she’d passed earlier. She wanted to make it clear that she Did. Not. Trust. it. She stood back and growled at it for a
while, and then, eventually, was persuaded to come closer.
Leaning as far as her little legs could manage, she stretched to carefully sniff it while keeping her distance. She still wasn’t entirely happy and ran most of the way to the end of the
path to get away from the mysterious cold heap.
(This same dog earlier this year spent quarter of an hour barking at our wheelbarrow when, unusually, it was left in the middle of the lawn, rather than beside the shed. She doesn’t
like change!)
The dog and I came out to Ducklington today for a spot of geohashing, in search of the 2024-11-14 51 -1 geohashpoint.
After a walk around the fields to the East we had to give up on that expedition (for reasons that’ll be described in my geohashing log) so we decided to console ourselves with a hunt
for this nearby geocache, instead.
Solving the first part was made harder when I failed to read the description properly and started counting letters in the sign, rather than the plaque, but once we’d corrected that
mistake we were on our way.
At the GZ there was a clear trail that looked likely, but the dog took some coaxing to join us. As soon as I was at the coordinates (feeling like I was hiding in a bush!) and followed
the hint instructions the cache was an easy find. TFTC!
The dog and I drove out to Ducklington, parking near the church, and walked out to these fields. Unfortunately the hashpoint turns out to be 33+ metres into a field full of sheep. That
_might’ve_ been the kind of trespassing I’d have been willing to consider, were it not for the combination of the amount of pedestrian traffic (a whole platoon of birdwatchers, armed
with extra-long camera lenses, and every dog walker under the sun!) and the fact that I had the dog with me (who’d have to have waited unhappily outside the field: not taking her _into_
a field of sheep, even by only 33 metres).
So near, and yet so far…
Instead, then, we took a pleasant walk around Ducklington and found the GC656RM “Church Micro 8564…Ducklington”
geocache, so it wasn’t entirely a wasted trip. The dog’s come home and zonked out in her basket after a decent walk, anwyay!