Grandparenting, grand training

It wasn’t just a granddad day, it was a grand training day. Or perhaps a granddad training day.

To be honest, it’s not entirely clear just who was being trained. The dogs, perhaps. The grandkids, more likely. The granddad, undoubtedly (and, for the avoidance of doubt, the granddad is me).

The moment Matilda saw me with the dogs’ leads, and the dogs, she remembered her favourite job from last visit, which was taking charge of Toffee’s lead. 

“Me, too,” she said. 

Matilda watching Luci, and
Elliott hitching a ride on grandfatherly shoulders

But it was late, and she had to go to bed. The next morning was a different story, though. Out we went into the woods. Grandparents, grandchildren, dogs.

Matilda’s an expert at walking Toffee these days

Matilda, naturally, wanted to take the role she’d made her own on the previous occasion. She took Toffee’s lead. Both seemed perfectly happy with the arrangement and the group progressed just fine.

But then Elliott spotted what was happening. Now the thing about Elliott is that at sixteen months, he’s twenty months younger than Matilda. At least, that’s what it looks like from the calendar. In his heart, a different reality reigns, and in that reality, they’re the same age.

That means that anything Matilda can do, Elliott can do just as well. I draw the line at saying ‘better’ because I see no sign of his harbouring that pretension. But ‘just as well’ seems to be very much his thinking.

That’s why he got himself walking at ten months, catching up physically as well as metaphorically with his big sister (“not that much bigger,” as I’m sure he’d tell me if he could). He’s working hard on language too, and I’m delighted to say that ‘granddad’ is one of his clearest, most finely articulated words. Given his efforts in those areas, how could he possibly allow himself to be left behind in something as simple and straightforward as dog walking?

Elliott let it be known that he was not satisfied with an arrangement that had Matilda walking a dog while he was confined to his Granddad’s shoulders. And when Elliott’s dissatisfied, he makes sure you don’t spend long in any doubt about it. Down off my shoulders he came. He had to have a lead to, with a dog at the end of it. With Toffee already spoken for, that had to be Luci.

Success as dog walkers

The problem is that, though both dogs are small (well, toy poodles, you know – what can you expect?), Luci is the bigger of the two. And, however, huge in spirit Elliott may be, he remains small in body. Even with the best of intentions, Luci can pull him over. And did from time to time.

Down but not out:
Elliott overthrown by Luci

That’s when Elliott got his chance to display his huge spirit to the full. Because he wasn’t going to let some tedious detail like having been pulled over conflict with the exciting new experience of walking a dog on a lead. He might need help getting up. He might even have to dry a few tears on the occasion when he scratched his cheek in a fall. But nothing was going to stop him achieving his aim of walking a dog just like his sister was.

Imagine the thrills. The emotions. It was an exciting time, watching a new learning experience play out before our eyes.

So exciting, in fact, that both kids decided they needed a rest and Granddad could carry them. Which was fine until he needed a rest too. That only became possible when we found a fallen tree trunk on which the children could sit.

A convenient means of transport
For two of the three people involved, at least

That’s not a trunk on the ground or anything dull like that. This one’s still more than a metre above the ground. So the kids didn’t so much sit on it as perch. Which was another learning experience, as Matilda, having reached her perch with the help of grandfatherly hands, then had a nervous chuckle before letting go of one of them, another such chuckle after letting go of the other, and then a huge guffaw of joy and triumph, as she realised she was sitting, unsupported, on a trunk more than her height off the ground.

A rest on a conveniently fallen tree trunk

“Look, no (supporting) hands!”
Matilda perching unaided on the fallen tree trunk

Everyone had fun. But above all, everyone learned a lot. And what more can you ask for of a training day?

Though, as far as training is concerned, I reckon that whatever anyone else was taught, I learned more than most.