Taking Your Dog on a Long Hike - Things to Consider Before Packing Up

Lots of us have four-legged companions who love to spend time with us.  For hikers, it's only natural to want to bring your pup out onto the trails with you.  In fact, more and more people are taking their dogs on long hikes every year.  Dogs, however, are just like humans when it comes to taking long hikes in the woods - it's not for everyone!  Not all dogs are equipped to handle the rigors of distance hiking or long, extended weekends in the woods.  If you've considered taking your dog out for their first long hike, here is a list of things to consider before buying the gear and taking the leap. 

Regulations

First of all, make sure where you are going is DOG FRIENDLY!  Not all places will allow dogs on trails - most US National Parks are not dog friendly!  And also, don't be that guy who gets fake permits to say your dog is a service dog just to bring them hiking with you.  We all know someone who does it and it's not only illegal, it also gives hikers a bad name.  Plan a trip someplace where dogs are welcome. 

Gear

People need backpacks that fit properly and this is no different for your pup!  While there are several commercial brands out there - Ruffwear, Mountain Smith, there are also some customizable dog packs available as well.  Groundbird Gear makes many types of customizable packs for dogs as well.  Knowing the proper sizing is key to making sure your dog stays happy and doesn't carry to much weight for his or her body on trail.  Not only should you consider a backpack for your dog, you should also consider sleeping conditions.  Will your dog be more comfortable on a sleeping pad or wrapped up in a sleeping bag for cooler nights?  Does your dog have sensitive feet and will he need to wear boots?  Where you're going may also have leash requirements.  Even if your dog is well-trained off leash you may be required to keep him or her on a leash of a certain length the whole time you're hiking.  Again, requirements are in place for a REASON!  Don't be that guy and claim your dog is well-trained and the rules don't apply to you.  

Mileage and Training

Just like people, dogs need to build up their mileage gradually as well!  While dogs are commonly thought of to be strong runners and able to carry on for long distances, that doesn't always tend to be the case.  If you're taking your first backpacking trip with your furry friend, it's a great idea to treat it like you're taking out a complete beginner.  Try to limit hikes to the 5-8 mile range per day for your first trip out.  If you're a super awesome pet parent, you should train your dog for hiking much like the way you began training to do longer hikes - and if you need some ideas for training, see my post about training for a long-distance hike here!  Since my dog, Gracie, is getting older and can't quite do the mileage she used to anymore, we spend a week or so leading up to the hike by practicing with her backpack and gradually add a little weight to it to reintroduce her to backpacking.  

The Happiness Factor

Does your dog actually like hiking? Sure, most dogs love taking walks and might even enjoy an hour or two out on the trails during the day, but how does your dog sleep at night in the woods?  If you're planning to keep your dog in your tent with you at night do you know how he or she sleeps in one?  Is your dog hypersensitive to sounds at night?  Is he a natural guardian and feel the need to protect you all night?  If your dog is suffering from lack of sleep at night it can hinder their performance during the day, just like a person!  This is why I recommend short mileage days and limited nights in the woods when training with your dog.  Chances are you're an amazing pet parent and your dog loves you and would do anything to make you happy - including packing up and taking a hike of any distance for you.  If your dog isn't cut out for longer mileage days they may not eat well or sleep well in the woods but will hike as many miles as you ask of him.  Watching for change in mood or normal behavior is incredibly important for backpacking with a dog!  Dogs cannot speak to us.  They can't tell us when they're hurting or when they don't feel well and it is up to us to determine if they're suffering.  

The decision to take a long hiking trip with a dog is an incredibly personal one.  While I love my dog and know she loves to go hiking, I know that backpacking long distances day after day is definitely not for her and that is okay.  I was broken hearted missing her during all my thru hikes, but in the end I know leaving her at home was for the best - best for her health and well-being!  While I have seen many people backpacking or even thru hiking with dogs, at some point your dog's body will begin to break down just like yours will.  It is so critically important to be in tune with how your pup is feeling to ensure they're still happy and having fun. 

Do you take your dog backpacking or trail running?  Are you someone who once backpacked with a dog but maybe can no longer take your four-legged friend with you?  I'd love to hear how you feel about it!  Leave me a comment below or find me on Facebook or Twitter to get the conversation started!

Frozen Head State Park - A Tuesday Adventure

NoKey and I had a rare day off together - something that hasn't happened much lately with my marathon training schedule.  We decided that since the weather was nice and since we had a whole day we would pack up our dog and head over to Frozen Head State Park in Morgan County for a day of hiking.  Since Frozen Head is a state park, we could take our dog - which is always an issue for us when we want to hike in the Smokies.  Dogs are not allowed on trails in National Parks.  We decided to do a loop hike with the North and South Old Mac Trails, visiting a fire tower in the middle, and then afterward hiking a short out and back to a beautiful waterfall.  

When we reached the parking lot around 11:15 a.m. it was already packed. The sunny skies and nearly 70-degree temperatures brought out everyone for a day hike!  We started on the flat old road bed of the South Old Mac Trail, hiking less than a mile before running into the old CCC Dynamite Shack left from the days of this being a CCC camp.  Now our trail began the steady climb to the top!  We crossed several streams and met lots of hikers coming up and down the trail, many of them with dogs as well!  After crossing several streams and taking a few switchbacks, we came up to the old road bed at the Tub Springs Campsite.  We took a short break here for lunch, looking around the large campsite and checking out the cool spring house before taking the 0.5-mile walk up the old road to the fire tower at the top of the hill.  I stayed down with the dog while NoKey went up and took in the views!

Gracie tangling me up with her leash during our lunch break! 

On the way back down the trail we now took the Panther Gap Trail to the North Old Mac Trail to head back down to the car.  When we got to this shady side of the hills, we noticed there was still a beautiful dusting of snow on the hillside.  Despite several days of warmer temperatures, the shade kept it cool enough to keep it from melting!  We passed a ton of hikers and lots of kids and dogs heading up the hill on this section of the hike.  Since the hill was also in the shade, it was a bit muddier than the trail we took to the top.  I thought our dog would start to get tired or slow down on this section, but she was so full of energy her leash actually gave me a bruise as she drug me down the mountain side!  When we reached the bottom of the loop it was still relatively early so we decided to head back a little further into the park and head to the Emory Falls Trail.  

The spring house and a grill for cooking.  

We were lucky enough to snag the last parking spot in the lot so we knew this trail would be even busier than the last.  The gentle grade and short distance make this hike popular!  We walked only half a mile before getting the view of our first waterfall - Debord Falls.  From here, it was supposed to only be half a mile up to Emory Falls, but we found it was closer to one mile.  The trail left the old road bed and went up on a rockier, eroded climb.  When we got to the top there were probably 50 or so people playing in the stream and photographing the waterfall.  It was nice to see so many people out and enjoying the day!  We had a quick and easy hike back out to the car. 

Emory Falls with a teeny rainbow! 

Frozen Head State Park is definitely my favorite place in East Tennessee to hike with my dog.  The trails are challenging, and there are close to 50 miles of trails, and you don't usually have to deal with the traffic and crowds of heading up to the Smokies.  There are also backpacking campsites and primitive front country campsites and they're all really cheap!  If you're looking to spend some time in the mountains with your dog or if you just want to get away from the traffic and noise in the Smokies, I definitely recommend Frozen Head State Park.  

You’re probably wondering where the heck all the hiking posts have been lately!  Well, over the summer we had a few setbacks with our sweet hiking partner Gracie.  She was hiking strong early on, but on the trip we did on the Finger Lakes Trail down near Cortland at Greek Peak, Virgil Mountain, and near the Spanish Loop she began limping severely.  On our second day poor Gracie’s feet were so swollen it looked like she didn’t even have feet on her legs, just swollen completely.  We got her into the cool creek to reduce the swelling, but we still had to complete our hike back to the car.  We took a lot of breaks and had her soak her feet in every single water crossing, including a long cool down at the trailhead creek, but we were incredibly worried.  She continued to limp intermittently throughout the next two weeks with no rhyme or reason. Some days we could walk 5 miles with no problem, some days a mere mile would make them swell.  

X-rays of her front paws revealed a carpal hyperextension injury to the wrist joint (yes, dogs have wrists, too!).  The vet said the best thing we could do for her injury would be two weeks’ worth of Rimadyl (dog ibuprofen basically) and six to eight weeks of rest - no running, jumping, or long distance walks!  It was incredibly heartbreaking to watch her every day want to go for a walk or go further on the short walks we could take her on and she wouldn’t understand why she couldn’t.  Even more heartbreaking was putting her up in her crate on the days we’d go out to the state parks for a hike and not be able to take her with us.  When we’d come home stinky and sweaty she would know where we had been and looked so betrayed!

Well, about three weeks after the initial diagnosis, we had another huge setback with our sweet Gracie.  Our neighbors fed her a Pedigree Dentastick one Sunday afternoon and on Monday after I get home from work I find out she has thrown up a huge pile of undigested food and shards of what look like cartilage.  She continued to throw up these shards of undigested matter the rest of the night.  The next day she threw up her breakfast and wouldn’t eat dinner.  She continued throwing up everything we tried feeding her until Friday night.  We finally thought we were in the clear, but we had a huge problem - she wasn’t eating at all.  She’d drink water, a ton, but no food.  Then, Sunday night, a week after the bone, she threw up white foam everywhere.  I looked in her sweet and pitiful face and noticed something terrifying - her eyes were yellow, she had jaundice.  

Monday morning, 8 days after the treat, we scheduled an appointment at the vet.  I went to work and NoKey took her in.  The blood work was astonishing.  Her liver enzymes were so high they were nowhere near on the chart.  Her bilirubin, which is 0.9 in a normal dog, was an astronomical 24 - the highest the clinic had ever seen in a dog in their practice, which is over 110 years old.  Her alkaline phosphatase was in the 3,000s, which normally is around 30.  We were plainly dealing with an incredibly sick dog.  

The next two nights and three days were spent with Gracie hospitalized in a 24-hour care facility on fluids to flush out her liver.  An abdominal ultrasound revealed acute pancreatitis, but the site at which her pancreas was swollen was the problem - it swelled right at the point where her gallbladder was completely shut off from draining bile into the intestines.  Plainly speaking, her cholecystitis was so bad the bile from her gallbladder was backing up into her liver.  The situation in dogs is severe.  In humans, the gallbladder can be removed, but not in dogs.  Cholecystectomies in a dog have only about a 25% success rate.  Really, the only thing we could do was wait and hope she would be able to eat.  

She was released from the hospital on Wednesday nearly 4.5 pounds lighter than she was only a few weeks earlier, which is a huge amount of loss for a dog who now weighed 63 pounds.  We couldn’t get her to even attempt eating food again until nearly Saturday afternoon, more than a week without eating anything substantial.  We fed her by hand for a few days, eggs and toast mostly, until about 1 week after her hospital release.  A dog who normally loves to gobble up her food now needing to be handfed was tough to deal with.  At some points, she would take the food from me, take it in the other room and spit it out, and then come back to me like she was hungry for more.  To say I was an emotional wreck when I saw what she had done was an understatement.  She so desperately wanted me to be happy that she was feeling better that she resorted to doing that was more than I could bear.  

So here we are now, Gracie is feeling better and her feet are healed up.  Her gallbladder is healed up.  Her liver is coming around slowly, but the damage was so severe that it will take quite a while to get her functions to normalize.  The vets are very impressed by her recovery as only about half of all dogs with gallbladder issues can pull through.  We’re getting back into our normal hiking routine and trying to take it slow - we don’t want to reinjure her feet or risk Gracie getting sick from drinking contaminated ground water since her liver is still not in the best shape.  What matters now is that she’s getting better after nearly eight weeks of pain and health problems.  I’ll be updating the blog later this week with some of the hikes we did while she was sick and then post some photos of the hike we took her on recently on the Finger Lakes Trail. 

I don’t know what I’d do without my sweet Gracie girl.  The fear of losing a family member struck me hard the past few weeks and not having her with me on my hikes has been even tougher.  Here’s to hoping she continues to grow stronger and healthier than she was before!