Hiking With Dogs
Kimberly is the most dedicated hiker I know – in any given year there might be 20 days she’s not in the woods with her hiker dog companions, Olive and Gus. We live at an ideal location for a daily hiker, with a trailhead a five-minute walk from our front door. Even better is that our house is on the less popular side of Mt. Airy Forest, which means Kimberly can let Olive and Gus go off-leash most of the time. Even when he’s not leashed, Gus has little interest in straying too far from Kimberly – he spends most of his time circling around her. Olive, on the other hand, is a trailblazer, happy to fly all over the place chasing deer and squirrels, rolling around in dead things, and generally having a grand old time.
I’m always impressed by how quickly our dogs learn how to hike off-leash. If it were up to me it wouldn’t happen, because I’m always convinced that the first time Kimberly unleashes one of our dogs, it will run off, never to return. Even though that has never happened, I can’t shake the feeling that this time, it will.
The last time it almost did. Shortly after we got Fergus in March of 2024 Kimberly tried to add him to the hiker dog pack. One late afternoon, about 45 minutes after Kimberly left for the woods with all three dogs, my phone rang. It was Kimberly, calling to tell me that Fergus was gone. Just as I was getting ready to hang up and head off to the woods to help search for him, I saw a black shape whizzing up our driveway. It was Fergus, who somehow found his way home. He’d managed to cross the four-lane divided road that separates us from the park without getting hit, an impressive feat in rush-hour traffic. He was completely gassed, panting and foaming at the mouth, though he revived quickly after I set up a fan to blow on him and gave him some ice cubes. That was the end of Fergus’ unleashed trips in the woods.
I’m not the hiker Kimberly is, but I used to go out with her and the dogs 2-3 times a week. I haven’t been doing much hiking over the last year because of my hip flexor issue, which came on after a hike. It’s one of those things that probably would have resolved in 6-8 weeks if I hadn’t tried to do too much too soon. I think I’ve finally learned that lesson, and 13 months in, I’m slowly getting back into the woods. I appreciate being out in nature, but I’m less tolerant than Kimberly is of the humidity, bugs, and spiderwebs in the summer, and I have essentially zero interest in going out if it’s much below freezing.
Still, I get the appeal. It’s great exercise and being out in nature is a wonderful way to clear one’s head. But I tend to prefer types of physical activity with a higher risk of bodily injury and/or more of a competitive aspect. The older I get the more things fit in the “you could really hurt yourself doing that” category, and so I’ve had to adjust. I’ve moved from heavy barbell weightlifting (to the point where I’d burst blood vessels in my face from the effort – I know, very dumb) to lighter dumbbells, and when I shoot hoops (one of my favorite outdoor activities) my movements are more ‘loping’ than ‘zipping’ around.
One of the highlights of our hikes is the pond that’s at around the halfway point of the trail. Olive loves water and is happy to jump in and swim around as long as the temperature is above 50 or so. Gus doesn’t see the appeal, and while he’ll occasionally stick a paw in he gets nervous when the water is much higher than a few inches and will quickly back away. Fergus is even worse – even when crossing shallow water, his MO is to try to jump over rather than go through. (He’s an amazing jumper so that usually works out for him. But it’s odd behavior for a Lab.)
Having great hiking so close by is one of the things that’s making it difficult for us to move. The number of homes within a 5-10 minute walk of a decent hiking trail is awfully small, especially in our price range. And the list of possibilities narrows even further if you’re looking for good off-leash hiking for dogs. If you’re not a canine companion hiker, the difference may not seem like a big one, but it most definitely is. Being tethered to a dog when hiking is a lot less fun on both ends of the leash.
I expect we’ll move eventually – despite being great for hiking, our house and yard are more than we need, and we’d like to end up somewhere smaller that requires less maintenance. Also, while we love the privacy of our nearly two-acre wooded lot, it also means that we don’t have many neighbors close by. The older we get, the more appealing being part of a real neighborhood becomes to us.
Kimberly is hoping we’ll end up in New Hampshire which I’m fine with except for the crazy amount of Lyme Disease there. Considering how much time Kimberly and the dogs spend hiking, that’s a not-inconsiderable risk. It’s weird that we can give our dogs a once-a-month pill that protects them from fleas and ticks, but there’s nothing like that for humans yet. (There was a vaccine, but it was discontinued in 2002 due to a combination of low demand and lawsuits from people who claimed adverse reactions. With climate change making Lyme Disease far more prevalent there’s been an effort to develop a new vaccine, but even though early results are promising, it’s likely to be years before it’s available to the general public – and maybe longer if vaccine skeptic RFK Jr. has anything to say about it. (And as Secretary of Health and Human Services, he presumably has a lot to say about it.)
Live free or die!