I had a good time showcasing what Nadi's morning routine looks like the other day but someone (sorry, i forgot who it was) pointed out that the pictures on my morning route do not paint a pretty picture of where I live so I thought it would only be fair to show the other routes that we take as well. While Vietnam is a pretty polluted and litter covered country earning it the "honor" of being one of the most polluted countries in the world, this doesn't mean that everywhere is a dump and I don't want to give that impression.
So here is an alternate route for Nadi's morning "poopy-walk" that she is so excited about every day.
We start things out by taking an alleyway that is one of the only cutthroughs in my part of town where vehicles can't fit down it. There is only space for walking or I guess if they were a big enough jerk, a motorbike.
On the other side of this area we emerge on the walking streets which was a project that the city tried to pull off as far a beautifying the area is concerned a few years ago. The actual walking part of the walking street failed badly because people just drove around the fences with their cars and bikes so they stopped attempting to enforce the no car rule after 4 months or so. In this picture it is pretty early in the morning so there are only a few people wandering about. But this is one of the more popular areas with tourists and they do a pretty good job of keeping it clean.
We have to cross the street a few times on this walk and this is another area where Nadi shines as a good girl. If I give just a tiny tug on the leash or if I say "wait" in a semi-commanding sense, she will turn to look at me and remain totally still until I say "ok!" and lead her across the street. She is not a leash-tugger dog. I trained that out of her many moons ago.
Each one of these streets is about 200 meters in length, maybe a bit more, and they all run parallel to the beach. They put in these gardens at the end and most of the time it remains relatively clutter free. I like this part of the town because it is one of the only places in the entire city that people seem inclined to try to keep nice.
However, this does not prevent jerk motorbike drivers from turning the sidewalk / footpath into a motorbike parking lot. Sometimes there are so many bikes parked here that you cannot get through on foot and are forced to walk in the street. Times like when that happens makes me wish that the police would come by and just take everyone's bikes.... which is something that they do in fact do every now and then. In lieu of actual parking enforcement, the police go a bit nuts every now and then and just come by with a big truck and take everyone's bikes away. You have to figure out where your bike went, track it down, and pay a hefty fine to get your bike back. You aren't supposed to park on the sidewalk but everyone does it anyway.
You probably noticed at this point that Nadi has a shirt on. It is a red jumper and on the back it says "Cute Baby." I don't normally put clothes on Nadi but in instances like this where the street is wet putting a shirt on her prevents it being necessary to give her a bath - which she hates doing. Nadi is a low rider doggo, and even though she doesnt' mean to do it she will kick up all the water and dirt on the road and make her undercarriage a real mess if I don't put a shirt on her.
The fact that the ladies really love a dog with a shirt on and shower her with attention is just an added bonus.
Just before you get to the beach there is this nice little park that is owned and maintained by this rather large Catholic church complex. They really go out of their way to make sure the grass and plants are kept in good order. They go through cycles of dog-hating though and sometimes have signs up saying rather aggressively that no dogs are allowed. I don't take any chances as far as having a confrontation with a nun is concerned, so Nadi and I just keep to the perimeter.
At this point in our poopy walk Nadi's tank is already empty and we have walked 1.5 km. That's not so far for a human but Nadi's legs are really short and she starts to get tired at this point. Thankfully, I count on this being the case and at this point in our journey we only have a couple of hundred meters until we are back where we started at my condo.
She doesn't have any peepee or poopoo left in her body at this point but that doesn't stop her from squatting at every single lightpost even though she can't possibly mark it anymore.
It can be a bit annoying but Nadi MUST stop at each and every one of these lightposts and sniff for a while. She's old so I let her do whatever she wants at this point in her life.
This entire circuit takes us about 30 minutes and it is good for both of us. Since Nadi is old she is normally very tired by the time we make it back up to the 10th floor of my building, at which point she gets a treat for behaving so wonderfully, drinks a bunch of water from her giant hamster feeder, and the almost immediately goes back to sleep. Nadi will soon be 12 years old or 84 in dog years, so these days she spends almost all of her day sleeping, or getting really close to sleeping.
Since she got an A+ on her doggy behavior report card this morning, I put her back up on the bed and pushed together some pillow for her to rest her head on. It was a grand total of maybe 5 minutes before she was snoring. I am so jealous of her ability to achieve slumber so easily.
So that's the more scenic version of our routine poopy-walk and it does look a lot better than the construction filled one I posted earlier this week.
Just like always if you have a picture of your cute doggy I would like to see it. Have a great day!