When we first decided to bring KiKi to live with us we knew that our relationship with her was likely to be very different at first than had been the case with our previous dogs. The first two and a half years of her life were spent elsewhere, with a different family, and we knew nothing really of her past experiences. Along with all the other issues, anticipated or otherwise, one of our major concerns was always that she might run off or stray. Given her obvious enthusiasm for being out in the world, we tended to be pretty consistent as regards where and when we would take her on walks to give her time to become more familiar with her new surroundings. In the main we kept her on a lead or a long training line. With only a few exceptions, we always took Leica along too with the idea that as the dogs developed in their companionship, her reliability in terms of recall would help KiKi become more inclined to come when called. On more than a few occasions we have seen Facebook posts about rehomed dogs having strayed, and it doesn’t seem that hard to understand really. Setting aside cases of neglect or abuse it is easy to imagine that a rehomed dog, possibly confused and anxious at its new surroundings might set off searching for the people it had known previously. KiKi never new why she had found herself at ASH, or why she had been transplanted to come and live here with us and, however content she might now be, we had to be conscious of the possibility at least that she would try to make her own way back to her previous home. This far down the road, she’s doing well. We are still more cautious than we had been in the past, particularly when we visit new places and we have found that she has absolutely no understanding of roads or cars at all, which remains a concern. Even when she is able to roam and run loose, we can see her checking that we are still in her line of sight. She’s not quite ‘tied’ to our side like Leica, but we’re making progress.