Saturday 26 January 2013

Leap of Faith

Today we went for a hike to the Saut du Moine (the Monk's Leap).

Between 1385 and 1395 there was a bad guy, Raimond de Turrenne, who earned himself the nickname of The Scourge of Provence.  Basically he went around with his armies, generally trashing the place (he's responsible for the first vandalism of the Tour d'Aigues, when the original building, the central keep was seriously damaged) and trying to force the decent, law-abiding Provençal folk to pay homage to someone other than their rightful liege, the Comtesse de Provençe, Marie de Blois.

One day, his forces were attacking the abbey at Valsaintes, about 10km from here as the crow flies.  One of the monks fled in terror, with the attackers in hot pursuit.  Believing his God would protect him, the monk faced his horse at a waterfall on the Calavon river and jumped off the edge into the water below - a true leap of faith.  History does not record whether he survived or not - at least, I can't find out for sure if he did!  But the waterfall has been know as Le Saut du Moine ever since.

I've been looking at trekking routes, one of which would bring us past Le Saut de Moine, and I wanted to check how horse-friendly the terrain was.  We parked the jeep 2km away from Valsainte and set off on foot, Cinnamon running along off-leash, Cookie on the leash trotting beside the LSH.

Following on from the OOPS post, let me just clarify this - Cookie is never intentionally off-leash.  She is just too unpredictable, too disobedient and too easily distracted to trust.  So what on earth are we going to do when we start long-distance trekking?  Leave her in kennels every time?  Well, we don't want to do that.  Attach her to a lunge line and lead her along while we ride?  Somehow, I don't think that's a safe option, and I think Aero and Flurry would take a dim view of it.  We've been talking about trying her off-leash for a long time now, so that we can start to develop some trust in her, and so that she learns to follow us as we hike along.  Once we can trust her while we're on foot, then we start introducing the horses into the picture... that's the plan, anyway.

Anyway, we decided that today was the day.  Like the monk from Valsainte, we had to take a leap of faith and just give Cookie her freedom.  We unclipped the leash and kept her attention focussed on us by throwing the ball a couple of times.  I had two tennis-balls with me, every time she came back with one, I would give her a little treat and throw the other while I picked up the first one.  It was going great - and then, BAM, a scent distracted her, she spat the ball out as she ran along and disappeared into the bushes, oblivious to our calls and oblivious to her abandoned toy.

What should we do? we wondered.  Let's just keep walking, she'll either follow or she won't, we have to trust her sometime, we said...

And she followed!  She spent the whole three hour walk off-leash apart from two occasions - once when we were passing through Valsaintes and once when we met some other dogs - Jack Russell Terriers, as it happened!  Our walk was about 12km, but between all the back & forth and side to side exploring she did I reckon she covered the best part of 18km, most of it at a run.  We called her back every so often and gave her a little treat each time.  By the time we were nearly back at the jeep, it was just like walking with a normal dog - she was pretty tired, and happily trotting along, just ahead of us.  She was exhausted afterwards, and actually lay down, asleep, under my chair when we stopped into a Café - unheard of behaviour, normally she stands on full alert the whole time!

Leaps of Faith aside, Le Saut du Moine is a stunningly beautiful spot.  There will be a mounted, picnic expedition there in the not too distant future...
And yes, the waterfall has a lot of ice in it.

11 comments:

  1. Yay for Cookie! It is hard to take that leap. My dog Maggie is similar, but when we take her to the park to swim, she is near perfect off leash. And that place look gorgeous!!

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    1. Yes, definitely hard to take that leap, and it will be a long long time (possibly never) before we trust her in a village or near a farm, with the Mortal Enemy, Catkind, wandering around.
      We couldn't believe how beautiful it is - it's referred to in the guide books in a sort of offhand way "oh yeah, and to the North of the gorge of Oppedette there's this place where this guy jumped off a cliff..."

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  2. That is a beautiful spot. You are right about teaching your dog to be off leash, the only way it ever really works is if you make the dog be responsible for keeping track of you rather than the other way around.

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    1. Yeah that's kinda what I had in my head, that she has to learn to follow...

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  3. Sounds like she was pretty good as long as she doesn't get distracted. Bet she slept like log when she got home. Beautiful falls and country. Good luck with your little adventurer.

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  4. She took herself off to her bedroom under the stairs when we got home!
    We have a ways to go yet before we can be confident in her, but it was a good start

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  5. Well done! Our dog was much more attentive to us and stuck near us when we were on horseback. I think she didn't trust the situation and wanted to keep an eye on us... the effect never wore off.

    What a stunning waterfall...

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  6. Good dog, Cookie! That was always one of my dilemmas--what to do with the dog on trail rides. I knew she'd have a blast, but "come" was not really in her vocabulary. And an off-lead Rottweiler has a tendency to make people over-react. But since we got her late in life--we found she had lots of holes in her training. We will be more diligent with our next dog so it can come with us on trail rides!
    That waterfall looks so inviting--even if there is ice--I imagine it in August! Sounds like you've got another great trek in the works.

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    1. I think it'll be completely dry by August - we have explored various stretches of that river (the Calavon) and it's as full now as we've ever seen it.

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  7. What a good girl Cookie is :-)and love that waterfall shot - simply stunning.

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  8. The falls look amazing, what a hack that will be !

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