Chico and I have been traveling down and up the east coast for the last couple weeks, we’ve been doing a lot of visiting in new places. For New Year’s Eve we’re visiting K&A who live near fancy-pants East Hampton, NY. After a long week, almost all of it on leash, in Washington, DC, we both craved a long off-leash walk and our hostess kindly offered to show us the way to Louse Point.

She reassuringly said, “Lots of people take their dogs there to run in the off season.” In one way, that’s a relief, I know it is permitted and we won’t get in trouble. In another way, that phrase strikes terror in my heart because it means that there will be other dogs and Chico might do his silly dog-aggressive stuff.

But we went.

Plenty of room to run at the beach. The water tastes funny, but there's a lot of it.

And it went really well.

There were a number of other dogs and with sufficient application of treats and plenty of happy-voice commands, there were no problems, no snarling, no aggression. All the dogs we met were his size or smaller, I’m sure that helped.

it's always nice to be with someone who can take a picture of both of us. You'll notice that there are no pictures of Chico with other dogs, I was quite busy managing him when dogs were around.

This trip has involved going to lots of strange places in rapid succession, meeting lots of new people and dogs. Chico has done such a good job, he has handled all this with such aplomb, I can’t express how proud I am of him.