Dog Walking

Dogs taking us for a walk on Nai Harn Beach

Moving from 2.5 hectares in Canada to the tropical climate of Thailand in a house with about 750 sq. feet of outdoor space, put a severe curtailment to the bassets ability to wander in and out and sniff away and run and play. We knew that the move would bring some adjustments for them, including getting acclimatised to the tropics. It also meant walking on a lead in a harness.

I am the first to say that these things confound me every single time no matter how often I have to put them into and take them out of the harnesses. Clive gets rather frustrated with me, but the mechanics truly elude me. After a few months I am actually recognizing when it is on wrong, its just the steps to get there that are the problem. I must admit that the dogs show enormous patience with me, except for Grace who simply goes passive resistant and drops her full weight to the ground and relaxes all muscles. If you try to roll her, she will yelp as if you have just kicked her, usually sending Annie into a flight panic. I am getting good enough that I am capable of actually doing this with her laying prone. All of those years spent in prisons with passive resistant people, especially the Dukabour women, were there is a will there is a way.


When I returned recently from Canada, Clive and our friend Dul had managed to set up a daily walking schedule. As soon as Annie had her morning treat she begins to prance near the front door and bark, to tell you it is time to go for a walk. This incites the other three, and soon the neighbourhood, by now, knows that the bassets are about to come out of their yard. The morning after my return I got to experience the joys of keeping 4 leads untangles, as they pass back and forth to sniff here and there. My wardrobe consists of yesterdays shorts and T shirt, because about 500 meters into the walk I will be pouring sweat from places I did not know you could sweat. Clive likes this as it usually assures him that I have in fact changed clothes from day to day and that the clothes I am wearing will get to the laundry. There is a system worked out. The backpack has two chilled bottles f water, with a drinking bowl, and 2 spare leads, as well as an ample supply of plastic bags to pick up dog poop. We stroll the moos and soi’s with the pack of 4 who bark their arrival to every soi dog and yard dog in the neighbourhood. By sound alone, you can track us. The barking is broken with occasional periods of silence, which usually means that something interesting has been found. Maintaining visual contact is essential. Lest you find they have found something that has baked and rotted in the sun and they are taking turns, drop and rolling in it. I think, “and we are worried about making sure we pick up their poop?” I was happy however to see that a dead snake seems to elicit the same reaction I do to them. An instant jumping away and wary avoidance.

After we have traveled about 2 KM it is time for a break and a drink of water and the trip back home. By now they have been running and jumping and are getting exhausted. We learnt early on to read these signs, as failure to do so could and has resulted in having to carry a dead weight basset home. We were on a dead end road area tat is being encroached but  the jungle brush, when a sudden crashing sound alerts us to something coming from the creek through the bush. Suddenly from about 20 meters away appears a very large full sized water buffalo. He takes a stance to see what the commotion has been about and thankfully, as if disinterested he saunters across the road and through the opposite ditch. I think the dogs were just as surprised, although I had visions of them wanting to chase and play. The routine is similar, daily, but the encounters and experiences are never completely the same. We have the crazy dog that has to be approached behind his gate with snarling and teeth bared, and Grace going up and barking in his face and wandering away, leaving him foaming and dancing. There are the soi dogs who all come for a sniff, mostly with some form of open sore or skin condition.

With the acquisition of Thunderbird 3, the process of dog walking has now evolved to include beach walks. Each is put into their harness and then tethered with a split lead, so they are paired. They love the motorbike and have now become very adapt, at least Byron and Annie of being able to leap in and out of the sidecar. Dixie and Grace do not have the agility, but serve as the early warning system. barking our arrival as we drive down the roadways and lanes to the local beach at PaLai. This has the effect of waking sleeping soi (street) dogs who have been napping under parked vehicles next to the roadways, who then begin the chase of this crazy basket of barking bassets. A bit unnerving negotiating the machine when surrounded by running dogs; seated next to two continuous barkers, I believe egging them on; turning blind corners; and negotiating around vehicles that are just parked anywhere. But somehow we seem to make it okay.

While I have experience with tide tables from our scuba diving experience, understanding high and low tide is fairly straight forward. It has taken a while to know at what tide level is the beach accessible for the full walk period. 2.3 meters is the highest we want, and anything below 1.9 is too low for a number of reasons. At 2.3 and higher, the water is against the seawall break, and makes walking in partially submerged beach a bit of a challenge, not to mention that Annie is not impressed with waves and already having to do a detour through the higher ground resulted ina cut pad from a broken beer bottle. If the tide rises before you make the turn around to come back, you have to go to higher ground as well. One day this detour began nicely, with the dogs all exploring the roadway as we headed back. Soon Byron and Grace, who go off leash fine, decided that it is better to actually go off-road and check our peoples houses and gardens. Clive learned early on how to say he was sorry and apologize in Thai to some people who have been startled to find a pack of bassets chasing their cat indoors or checking out what they might be eating at this particular moment. And there is the usual soi dog presence. Despite the fact that the can come in packs, which can be a bit worrisome, they tend to run away quickly as the basset baying winds up. Annie and Dixie who are mostly on-lead managed one morning to go full bore and pulled the lead handles from our hands and the chase was on. One poor soi dog running as if fearful for it’s life and two white terrors right behind, dragging their leads, through the mud and sewer. Having a blast.

When the tide is out too low, the beach becomes a tidal mud flat, and is teeming with sea life that is moving in the mud, mostly crabs. Birds also tend to sit and pick through the mud. In a short lived act of testing, Dixie was off-leash and decided that somehow as a basset she was now a bird dog and began the run through the mud flats to chase birds. She has no figured out that being white running through mud and barking your brains out, usually gives the birds the upper hand. They simply fly out further, and Dixie just follows. At the end of the run, she was a tri-tone basset. The top area marked by the line between nose tip and butt, was a smelly oozing, dripping greyish colour, topped with her head and back showing the white and lemon colour she is naturally. Panting with slobber having flapped on her snout, she is exhausted but happy. Coming home her disposition changes as she gets a hose down and we apparently wash all the best part away.

On a morning where we had not read the tables very well, we began the normal walk of turning left off the boat ramp at the beach. After a very short walk we knew the beach was out of the question today, so off leash they went again, this time to the right. This part of the beach is full of mangroves. After we realised that in our naivety they would keep running, Clive began the trek through the edge of the mangrove, which has a nice sticky mud of it’s own that sticks like cement. At one point because I had stayed behind at the loading area in case they circled back through the bush, I decided they had been gone a long time.

While we have now grown accustomed to having our cell phones with us everywhere, I had assumed Clive had his. I called and hear it ringing in my backpack. So I decided to head after them. I thought that following the set of dog tracks and one pair of flip-flops should be easy enough. As the tide was rising, the trail alongside the mangrove was now filling with water and getting more and more narrow. Having discussed crocodiles with our Thai friend, and being told they did not have them here, I felt somewhat secure. Wandering mangroves in most tropical climates is assured to find crocs lurking in the mud. I was also reassured by not hearing a barking match or worse Clive yelling because a croc had gotten one of the dogs. I realized that to pursue this further was futile and had returned to the bike, to call our friend to assist in a search party. As I was dialing, out from the mangrove pounced Annie, tail in full flag and running, tongue hanging out, followed by the other three. Shortly thereafter Clive emerged to relate that he had  tracked the dogs to a large field, where the noise drew him only to find 4 bassets jumping running and chasing each other, like 4 puppies discovering the joy of running. On return to Thunderbird 3 we also became aware that Byron had obviously found some exotic scent to roll in. I think it is water buffalo poop, although it could have been a decayed fish as well. After being gagged and renaming him Sir Stinks-A-Lot, Clive managed to mix up some ketchup and water and give him a bath, which reduced Byron to Sir Stinks-A-Little. One week later the smell seems to have gone. He had managed to run into the house and got on the bed, where it took two washes to get the smell out of the bed and pillows.

While Clive was recently back in Canada, so I had been dealing with beach walks without him. Luckily our friend is working part-time jobs (he has 3---- sort of)  and he and the dogs love each other, so he has been a welcome set of hands. We went to Palai and I had read the tables right. The dogs get to go off leash down the beach where they cannot get into much trouble and people are seldom seen. My comfort about mangroves was shattered when I came upon Byron pouncing at something on the beach, barking to the other three and I discovered that he had managed to find a baby crocodile, obviously washed into the rocks by the high tide and slowly expiring. But it still had enough sense about it that it was partially leaping forward to try and get a grip of his nose.  An attempt to pick it up and return it to the ocean, resulted in it trying to get a grip of my hand as well. Upon our return we found that he has expired, as evidenced by Annie going back up to it and nosing it along the beach. It was a wonderful walk and as we headed back to Thunderbird 3, I was thinking just how good a day it had been and how nice it is to do this walk. The pups certainly enjoy it and they tend to spend the rest fo the day snoozing after a good beach run.  We loaded them into the cart and then I went to start it. Somehow I had managed to loose the key to the motorbike on the beach.

I stayed with the pups at the restaurant parking while Dul retraced our steps without success.  I had kept the dogs carted, and pushed us into the shade. The ramp is next to a very large outdoor type seafood restaurant, popular with the locals and tour bus operators. A large group of Korean tourists came running to photograph the dogs, who seemed rather unimpressed, as people crowded the cart to pose and have pictures taken with them.  Suddenly I had a very deep voice screech and saw approaching,  a rather large Katoey with three girlfriends came and sat on the bike for a photo op and then wanted to have me with the katoey draping herself over me for a photo op. For the uninitiated a Katoey is the Thai word for a transvestite. Most often referred to as “lady-boys”. And this is not some poor attempt to imitate women. These people are usually stunningly beautiful, alas not this one, and more than one visiting navy person has made the mistake of finding out the plumbing was not as it seemed.

By this time Mr. D was back, so we began the process of pushing the cart back home. Mr. D managed to flag someone down and got a lift back to the house to get the spare key. I had a few people stop to see if they could help me, and I managed to communicate that help was on the way. One offer of a tow behind a dump truck with a piece of rope was tempting, but in the end I realized would be very foolhardy. If you have seen the dump trucks move here, you would understand that doing 80 KM on Thunderbird 3 would not be a good idea.

Mr. D. caught up with me as I had continued to walk the bike back with 4 very quiet pups thinking this was pretty cool, dad walking behind and a nice leisurely ride without that noise from the motorbike. . When we had parked to avoid a blind corner a couple pulled up in a Mercedes and wanted to buy Grace and Annie.
As tempting as it might have been with princess yaps-a-lot, (Dixie) I declined so they then wanted to pre-order puppies. I had to disappoint them yet again as none can have or father puppies. We then had a key and as we pulled away, the sky opened up and a torrential rain descended upon us, so the pups all had a fresh water rinse before we got home.