Three hikes, four dogs

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There is one part of the trail where the sun never shines
and it still held the small amount of snow that fell
earlier in the week. We had even less at our house.

Friday I took Max out for a good six mile hike. He was surprisingly cooperative about limiting our pace to a human level, for the most part. Once he saw a deer, however, all bets were off. More distracting than the deer, actually, was the off-leash dog that came up on us from behind and surprised us both. The woman running with the dog wasn't too far behind, and although she didn't have control of her dog they got on past us fairly quickly while I held Max off the side of the trail.




I'm really enjoying this MapMyWalk app on my iphone.
This is the six mile route I did with Max on Friday.



Not to be outdone by a mere shepherd, Sparky and I did seven miles on Saturday, including some new parts of the trail, for me anyway. We were going for distance rather than speed and he was pretty good about that, perhaps because I didn't object when he wanted to stop to make a mark or sniff another's. We encountered two hikers, without a dog, early on the walk but saw no one after that although it was a great day to be out there.  Cold, but sunny, the ground pretty well frozen in most places, that's ideal hiking conditions as far as I'm concerned.

Seven miles with Sparky on Saturday

Saturday I took the duo, Ochie and Maya, for another six miler.  He was bouncing all over for the first three or four miles, back and forth, marking every tree or at least trying to. After that he calmed down a bit, either because he was getting tired or was out of pee. Maya is getting better about sticking to the trail and leading the way. The two of them together pull about the same as either Max or Sparky alone, with the difference being that sometimes they pulled in opposite directions. Another good walk.