A bit of a different day today. It started by Colin spotting a Sparrow hawk just sitting on the neighbour opposites wall and as we watched it flew onto their doorstep and then up into a tree nearby. Very unusual behaviour.
As the weather was dry and we hadn’t been out much recently we decided to take a longer walk today. We headed out towards Teddington Lock and then along a rather muddy towpath towards Kingston. We dipped into Waitrose to buy some more coffee which we are getting through a lot of and also picked up some sandwiches for lunch as obviously no cafes are open during lock down.
Kingston was unsurprisingly very quiet and continued to be as we walked over the bridge towards Home Park. We sat on the same bench that we had eaten sandwiches on some months ago and fed the two crows who sat patently behind us with some crusts and crisps.
We took a different route back through Home Park, past the horses and then out onto Hampton Court Road and into Bushy Park. It was busy but not too bad so we could easily walk back along Chestnut Avenue to the Teddington Gate. Excitement of the day part 2 as we walked down Station Road. From afar we spotted a black dog running back and forth across the road. It was very worrying and I was rather annoyed to see what I thought was the owner and another person chatting together. However, it turned out that the dog did not belong to either of them and they had just spotted it. It was a large black cockapoo. We were all trying to maintain our social distancing but one of the women decided to try and entice the dog to the vet and we walked behind her to keep him moving forward and away from the road. He was so friendly and didn’t seem frightened at all.
I called the vet and the woman who answered agreed to help scan him for a microchip but suggested I try and carry him if he seemed friendly as the High Street would be dangerous with the traffic. I decided to go for it and amazingly he was quite happy to be picked up and carried. The other woman was late for work and so left us to it. I soon worked out that he was definitely not underfed and the walk to the vet seemed twice as long as normal as I was so worried about putting him down. Colin went ahead and the vet was ready with a lead when we arrived. I was very relieved to be able to put him down.
Within just a few minutes she confirmed that not only did she know who owned him, he was also one of their patients. She also told us his name was Monty and when I called him he was so happy. He was a lovely dog and despite my arms being extremely sore from carrying him all that distance, I was sorry to leave him behind.
We went home to recover and later in the evening I had my weekly photo club Zoom session which was really good with an underwater diving photographer.
