Follow that goat!

We decided to visit the forest for our afternoon walk but wanted to explore a different way of getting there. I like exploring because we always discover something interesting and two minutes into our walk, in the street behind our house, we found something very interesting. You may not be able to see them very well in this picture because we had to keep our distance but we came across a shepherd and his dog guiding a small herd of goats towards the forest. 

We followed them for a while but then discovered a small street that we hadn’t seen before so we turned into it and half way along it found this amazing vehicle.

The tall person thinks it may have been used as an ambulance at some time. It looked very old. We both thought that it was sad that something that may have helped to save hundreds or thousands of lives was now neglected and forgotten. Can you imagine the stories it could tell? Poor hero ambulance. We both agreed that we would visit it every so often so it would not be forgotten.

  

By the way, the forest was beautiful. We both went for a run along this forest road and I won!

A pavlovian response

A refuse truck comes to our neighborhood three times a week to collect household trash. A man walks in front of the truck ringing a hand bell to announce its arrival. People hear the bell and take their bags of trash to the street where they are collected and put into the refuse truck. The tall person said that the sound of the bell has created a Pavlovian conditioning in people as everyone thinks about trash whenever they hear a bell ringing. We can sometimes hear the big bells of Sameba Church ringing from the centre of Tbilisi and I wonder if everyone in our neighborhood rushes to the street with their trash. 

In between the times that the refuse truck tours the neighborhood everyone takes their trash to communal bins. My street doesn’t have any but there are several in nearby streets and we sometimes stop to drop off our bags of trash before we begin our walks.

The communal bins are an important source of food for the many stray cats and dogs that live in our neighborhood. People know this and often hang bags of stale bread on the side of the bins for the dogs to eat.

I often see a black and white stray cat near the bins in this picture. He has a friend but his friend usually runs away when he sees me. I don’t chase them or scare them. I know they have a hard life and I wouldn’t want to make it any harder.

My three-dimensional space

My home is on the side of a mountain that overlooks the city of Tbilisi. Because of this, my neighborhood is both vertical and horizontal. Parallel streets on different levels are connected by little steep streets and also by steps that are often very narrow.

If we want to go on a vertical walk through our neighborhood we sometimes use the steps to go up or down. The steps are a useful shortcut but we have to be very careful.

We always stop at the top or bottom and look to see if anyone is walking up or down. We do this because the steps are narrow and some people get nervous when they see me and we don’t want to frighten anyone.

On our walk this morning, we were at the top of some steps, about to go down, and saw a man half way up. The tall person stopped me going down and waved to the man to come up but the man turned round and quickly walked all the way down. The tall person said that I probably look huge to someone looking up. Hmm, I think it is because of the tall person. He probably looks like a scary giant! 

We also stop before we exit the top or bottom of the steps and check to see if anyone is passing, which is sometimes difficult because we can’t see round corners.

I’ve suggested to the tall person that he whistles loudly as we approach the exit but he said that he is thinking of fitting a car horn on my collar.

Hmm, I think that might be more scary than suddenly coming face to face with me!