Hannah & Max Make Friends In Aberdeenshire
This week Hannah showed us how important it is to be a part of a supportive community. She originally posted a few weeks back asking about meeting up with members in Scotland when she travelled up from Manchester. She was able to meet multiple people and have a much better trip than her previous holiday in Scotland. We love to hear stories like this as it was the reason Honest Hounds came to existence.
Hannah posted this first message on September 22nd
“Hello! Hopefully this isn’t too out of line with this space as this is a sort of temporary introduction!
I'm from the Manchester groups but will be coming to Aberdeenshire 5th/6th-9th/10th October and would love to meet up with some other members or join any walks you might have going on!
I have joined the local WhatsApp groups but thought a post here would be good too in case anyone is in other nearby groups or lived there before and has any walk/area recommendations!
All being well we will be relocating to a Scottish smallholding in the next 6ish months! A lot of the properties with land within our budget are in Aberdeenshire so I'm going to to explore the area a bit. So I'd love to organise some meet ups if anyone is free during this time :) Especially keen to hear from you if you live rurally/on a smallholding 😆
My dog is Max, a 7yo spaniel who has a short fuse in proximity/face-face with dogs and guarding around dogs. He wears a muzzle around dogs and we're happy to do on or off lead walks of any distance ⛰️🐾”
And today (October 10th) she updated us on how her trip went, highlighting the power of the Honest Hounds Community!
“We're just back from our Aberdeenshire/Morayshire/Inverness car camping adventure! The entire trip was such a huge success, made even better by making the effort to meet up with Scottish HH members! Highly highly recommend this to anyone doing a trip away!
Thank you to:
Ana and Bernie
Bev and Odin
Diane and Angus
For making us feel so welcome!
On our trip to Scotland last September we actually only stayed for one night because on the second day an off lead dog in the middle of nowhere came charging round a corner and surprised Max leading to a scrap... Whilst this massively knocked my confidence initially, this was the catalyst to us going full time in the muzzle (as opposed to just in neutral walks and in busy places).
Fast forward to a year later I have so much more trust in Max to make good decisions, and to myself to manage situations better and block/intervene where needed (still a huge learning process!!)
So now on this trip we passed countless dogs on/off lead with zero issues 🙌 And just casually walking off/on lead with 4 new dogs with only one resource guarding snap and a few mounting attempts of Angus ! - Which of itself was not so much a negative but a great learning experience, as the previous day Bev could see absolutely no issues with Max's social status around Odin!💭”
