Wild goose (duck??) hunt

Ella and I are currently in the routine of hitting Central Park twice a day for an average of about 90 mins each time (sometimes 2+ hours per walk). Momma’s EXHAUSTED (I thought I was in good shape before I got Ella – but not good enough. This is insane…). The jaunts are typically a balanced composition of walking, sniffing, socializing with other dogs, being stopped by random people who can’t resist Ella’s cuteness, Ella trying to dominate by sitting and refusing to move when she’s not the least bit tired, sprinting, jogging, and, recently, “stalking prey”. In Central Park, those prey consist of pigeons, squirrels, and geese…or are they ducks?

OK, look I don’t really know whether they’re geese or ducks which I know is ridiculous. And I’m a smart person, I swear. Geese have longer necks right? All I know is that when I lived on Long Island during graduate school, there was such a geese epidemic…well, really a geese POOP epidemic…that it became a public health problem and they were literally gassing them to death to try to resolve it. Awful. And they used to wander around the parking lot at my old apartment complex…but I must admit I never really studied the differences between those geese and the ducks I grew up with (not as pets, mind you…I’m referring to the ducks at nearby ponds in my community). Anyway, duck duck freaking goose, ok? Point is, Ella had a ball today going after anything with feathers and a beak.

So here’s a clip of her wild goose hunt on tonight’s walk. You’ll hear me call them geese on the vid…but in hindsight I think they were ducks. Look, it was pitch dark…and clearly in daylight I’d have trouble…again, NOT THE POINT, PEOPLE.

A couple of additional comments about the video…a) Sorry for my incessant sniffles…it’s still really cold here in NYC plus I haven’t gotten rid of my sinus infection yet, b) You’ll hear me refer to some crazy man who’s groaning in the background and distracting Ella…you can only hear a little bit of it in the clip, and just trust me on this one – LUCKY YOU – I SWEAR he was just jogging but those noises were obscene (and went on forever because he was “jogging” at a snail’s pace), and c) I didn’t get this on camera unfortunately – or maybe fortunately – but those ducks/geese left QUITE a mess behind in the end (hee hee…pun sort of intended). Ella scared the sh** out of them! Good girl Ella! ;)