[Explore] At the Park

With both of them being stubborn as they were and unwilling to relent, getting to the park hadn't been easy. It took the better part of an hour, with Leeward lunging enthusiastically against her lead and Rob rooting his feet every time she tried to pull him forward. The starting and stopping was a brilliant waste of time, and had it not been for the fact that Rob had nothing else he needed to do today, he would have brought her home long ago.

 

But Rob wasn't built for quitting, and the more Leeward tested him, the more determined he was to see this walk through. As the minutes wore on, he spotted moments of promise, where she paused for a second before trying to take off again. Those moments were important. He did his best to praise her in those fleeting moments of calm, when she didn't seem like a four-legged hurricane trying to blow through the town. But he didn't know if he was doing it right. Some of it was intuition, but much of what he was doing was purely a guess.

 

"Should've gone with Ollie to class."

 

This latest, he grumbled as he wrapped the leash once around his hand to help him hang onto it for the next time Leeward surged forward. She was inevitable, a bit like a storm, always moving forward, never content to be where she was. If there was any upside to this discovery, it was realizing that this hound was truly named right.

 

As they worked their way slowly toward the park, Leeward found plenty of things to amuse herself with, sniffing at puddles and pieces of trash and at people's trouser legs as they skirted by. People tended to give them a wide berth - Rob was not the most inviting of figures at the best of times, but with a look of deep concentration screwed upon his face, strangers did their very best not to interrupt him in any way. But Leeward seemed quite keen on becoming everybody's friend, and she pulled and yanked and barked and whined in a desperate attempt to wrangle pets from these strangers. 

 

To no avail. Rob wasn't easily cowed, and he refused to budge in any direction that was not forward along the road. So it was that by the time they reached the park, they had been out for quite some time.

 

"Surely this is better," he said to Leeward as they both set foot onto the grass. "Less traffic to run you over, and more space to sniff."

 

She seemed to agree. The hound put her nose to the grass, sniffing furiously as she ambled from one side to another, seemingly having forgotten all the incredible wonders of the path they had come on. She followed her nose with confidence, sniffing all about, winding her way between trees, underneath pathside benches, occasionally even hopping up onto the benches themselves to investigate the smells of the bums that had rested there before.

 

As they went, she seemed to relax, losing some of the frantic energy of before as she settled into her discovery. Her tail wagged happily as they trotted across the grass and she looked quite intent on finding something or other, though Rob could hardly tell what.

 

But the important thing was the calm. Rob noted it with curiosity, seeing the way her steps seemed to loosen and her ears came up. Here in the park, she much more resembled the happy creature they saw at home. 

 

"It's because we've arrived, isn't it?" he said, happy to trail after her now that she wasn't doing her best to drag him across the street. "You got to your destination."

 

He could relate to that, in a way. That feeling of impatience, when he was trying to get somewhere but hadn't quite made it yet, was one Rob had felt more than once before in his life. When something got in his way, when circumstances outside of his control prevented him from making progress, he would feel a need to get out, to get moving. Like his energy had been trapped and bottled and he needed to simply move.

 

"Maybe you and I aren't so different after all," he said, eyes narrowing in consideration as he watched Leeward amble about. Maybe they were similar. "In any case, it's you and me now. You can count on me."

 

He was going to make sure they became a team. Tomorrow, they would start training.