Got on the internet and found a dog run in a local park, 10 minutes ride by car. Perfect, I thought, when I'm too tired to run with Claire I'll just load her in the car and she can run in the dog run...until we got there, and saw the size, or rather lack of size...
Claire never got beyond a trot, as usual rimming the fence, which was a tennis net, but all the interesting looking bushes are beyond the fence, and the space was almost claustrophobic. Fortunately it was the evening, so there was some shade, not that the two trees in the fenced off area offered much. Claire was categorized as a large dog by the park authorities, and is not allowed in the (also tiny) other dog run, but has to hire the whole Dog Run for Large Canines, costing a 100 yen for thirty minutes, plus a monthly registration fee of 500 yen. I took along her vaccination and tax papers along with her dog tag to register her, but decided since the place was so small and probably stiflingly hot in the sun it wasn't worth it. The noise from the two nearby roads, the overhead motorway and the two-lane commuter highway, also made the run less than pleasant. However, it was a nice little outing to somewhere new, and deepened my knowledge of our local area. Apparently the locals worked very hard to lobby the city for permission to install the dog runs, and the makeshift quality of the fencing shows just how much local effort in face of bureaucratic opposition went into the project (if it had been planned from the start it would have been perfectly designed and cost millions). Way to go...now if it had only been a little spacier...
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