Last weekend I was so excited to finally get us all to the walking trails by my house. Unfortunately, the experience didn't quite live up to the hype. It started off well. Theo (pictured, right, with his ghetto booty) was excited, as usual, to get out of the house and go somewhere new. I was excited to try out my new camera and get some good nature-y exercise.
This is a view of the trails. Can you tell I live in the desert? It's not much to look at, but it's better than sidewalks with well manicured lawns. I regret not taking a picture of it at the time, but after the fires that whole hill (mountain?) was completely green and awesome looking. I saw first hand how fire brings renewal. Too bad the summer heat killed all the greenery.
About ten minutes into the walk Theo started struggling with the heat. There's not a lot of shade on the trails, so Theo started to cool off wherever he could. When he started sitting in my shadow to cool off, I knew it was too hot for him to walk a couple miles. We barely got 50 feet before he plopped down and wouldn't move. We ended up turning back about 10 minutes in (after I had carried him for a few minutes). I was so disappointed!
We didn't even walk far enough to get to the cacti I wanted to photograph. Oh well. At least there were still other interesting sites to see on our limited walk. Next time I'll make sure we get to the cacti. It might be awhile before I attempt it again. We get hot summers where I live and the heat is just getting warmed up (pun intended :p). I won't attempt an evening walk because we get coyotes (I've seen them on the trails before), and I doubt I could get Husband up and at 'em early enough for an early morning walk. I guess the trails will just have to wait...so dog beach here we come!PS: New pictures on flickr, if you couldn't tell. :p
8 comments:
Love your blog and Theo's adorable! I understand the concern with the heat. We live in Alabama and it's already in the 90's with a heat index of over 100! The kids go out to do their business and then it's back into the a/c!
Don't they go crazy from cabin fever? Theo is hard to handle if he only gets one walk a day (he usually gets two), let alone none.
didja bring water? maybe that would help.
Of course I brought water! He wasn't thirsty, he was hot. :p We gave him tons of water, but he just didn't want to walk.
Oh poor theo! He looks SO HOT! Lucy's half brother gets really uncomfortable and bothered in the heat too, you can see it when he was Rally O competitions in the heat. He just doesn't want to move!
Poor Theo. Yeah, even with water, all that fur is probably a wee much under the sun. Poor baby. Maybe an early morning hike next time and a little umbrella for rest breaks?
Hmmm...an umbrella is a good idea... it's doesn't rain here very much, so I rarely know where my umbrella even is. I'll have to find it. I like that idea, thanks! :)
Poor Theo! Do you think maybe the ground was too hot to his tender puppy paw pads? I know when we took Bryson out in Sedona, he got huge ol' blisters after walking a short trail, probably coz he's not used to the hot surface.
Sometimes they need to build up the tolerance gradually to activities in the heat, hope your next outing would be more successful!
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