Meet My Friend/ Stalker...

As of late, I've been running into a lot of deer while out walking Maverick. Maverick, my super strong pit/ lab mix, goes crazy over anything- birds, squirrels, other dogs- so just imagine how he is with multiple deer.

Because of this, and the fact that the roads were super icy, I decided to walk him a completely different route than normal. About half way into our walk (and as I was picking up his biz-niss), I looked up to see a moose standing less than 10 feet away- staring at me straight on. What the?!

I live in town people. My first thought was: "AWESOME!... My second- "Crap!" I was standing on solid ice, less than 10 feet away from a moose, with a dog who was now jumping, barking, and pulling towards the moose like no other.

I slowly and carefully backed away, and rounded the corner into the alley. The alley was icier than the sidewalk I was previously on- great. It was here that I noticed that the backyard the moose was in went into the icy alley I was now in. I stopped for a second contemplating what I should do. I decided to go back out of the alley and down the road, away from the moose. As I made my step towards the street, the moose ran in front of me, looked in my direction, and stopped. Grrr! I wanted to yell at the moose- "What are you thinking?! I'm trying to give you space and get this almost uncontrollable dog away from you!" If the moose decided to charge us I was out of luck. I was in an alley of solid ice, fenced in on both sides and that moose was blocking my closest exit.

So I stood still, or as still as I could with my raging dog, and the moose finally looked away, and took off trotting down the middle of the street.

The next morning I walked Mavi a completely different route. And when we were almost home and only 2 blocks away from my house, guess who we ran into again.

So I again, slowly backtracked, and took Maverick home yet a different route. But this time, I drove back with my car, and took some pictures for proof

Meet my friend/ stalker:

He's kind of cute right?

Many tourists would see my incident as a perfect picture taking opportunity. But moose are wild animals and deserve their space.

Earlier this year, an elderly man was out walking his dogs in Alaska and a moose, that was much further off than mine, charged him and almost stomped him to death. Luckily his 80- something year old wife ran to their truck, got a shovel, and whacked at the moose until he took off. Had it not been for his bad ass wife, the man could have died. I never felt like I was in this amount of danger, but wild animals are unpredictable- and deserve respect :)