Barbie and biking....

For the first time in a long time, we managed to go out biking while there was still some daylight. I rigged my little Otek DVS550 video camera to the bar end of my Bike Friday - unfortunately the mount I used doesn't move the way I would like, and it slipped so it ended up pointing at the sky every time we went over a bump. This walk takes something like 27 minutes walking, and only 15 biking it. Barbie doesn't get over a trot, or we'd be going too fast. I bike with her on her collar because she I haven't been able to find a harness that she will tolerate wearing. We don't go much over jogging pace anyway so there have been no ill effects of her running in her collar only, even if she is providing the forward momentum for the bike at least some of the time.

There will be more biking videos to come now that I have sorted my camera problems and the days are getting longer. This one is a bit rough, but it's fun, so I thought it would be great to share :)

There were also three offleash dogs on this lap of the block. I didn't get any on the video. The first one was hanging around near a massive skip bin. He looked like a big block headed Mastiff type, and he was dragging a chain along behind him. He also looked like his right eyeball was almost hanging out of his head. If I didn't have Barbie and the bike I would have probably stopped to find out who his owner was, but there were people working in the nearby house, and he stayed in the general vicinity so I figured he belonged to them. Barbie very much wanted to keep an eye on him and so she slowed down and kept looking over her shoulder.

The second was when we went past a park where doggies are allowed off leash. One of those dogs was not very well controlled by it's owner and came towards us. I stopped quickly, but in hindsight I should have just kept going. It came and tried to jump all over Barbie. She wasn't particularly happy about that as she doesn't have a lot of room to move on the end of the Walkydog. As a result I have decided to make the 'leash' part of the Walkydog a couple of inches longer - this increases the risk of her running the wrong side of a pole, and the Walkydog doesn't have the emergency release feature that the Springer does, but I absolutely do not want an auto-release feature, where we ride there are still cars and people and the last thing I'd want is Barbie barrelling off!

The third dog was a Border Collie looking thing, and it's owner called it back when he spotted us. It obeyed. Good dog!