Cold weather walks

Sunday was cold and windy, but the sun was shining, and that's always a good day in my book. It sounds like we are in for our first winter snow storm of the season, so I figured I'd better get as many miles as possible in while I could.

Maya and I set out with Barkley for a brisk three miles on the trails. I started at the trailhead behind the Fluvanna Library and we stuck to wooded areas as much as possible to stay out of the wind.

Barkley enjoyed it and he walks very well on a leash. I plan to get him into the hiking rotation much more now that Groot is gone.

We drove the two miles back home, dropped off Barkley and picked up Max in his place. It really wasn't too cold as long as we kept moving, and we did. I switched to a lighter pair of gloves for this hike which made it easier to handle the leashes.

It didn't really seem that we were going so fast, and I did very little running, but we also didn't dawdle. It was too cold to stop for a lot of peeing and sniffing, or photo ops, which required taking off at least one glove. We covered another three miles.

We had plans to go to town for dinner in the evening, so I knew that Maya needed to be good and tired if I wanted to leave her home in a crate without her committing mayhem in our absence. We dropped off Max back at the house and picked up Daisy. I wasn't sure whether to take Daisy, Trooper, or Scooby, but Scooby has a home to go to later this week and Trooper is on a 24 hour fast due to digestive problems, so Daisy was the choice.

We had Gypsy for so long that it still amazes me to have two female shepherds get along so well.

Using the same starting point and sticking to the wooded portions of the trail meant that we repeated some portions of the trail, but really not so much. We did another three miles and by the end of it Maya and I had hiked just over nine miles. I am so happy and so lucky to have this park and trail system so close to home. It is easily the best thing about Fluvanna County.