Winter hikes

What a winter. Polar vortexes, recurrent snow and storms, chilly and wet and snow and more snow.

And these dogs. A snarly senior shepherd and a fat, hot, velvety heating pad of a mastiff mix 

and a pacing skinny anxious white shepherd. What are you going to do with all these things, in this weather? 

Well, you can stick 'em all in the car and go for a hike somewhere, who knows where. 

Better leave that up to Florian, and not ask too many questions. That always works out well.

We did do one smart thing on this hike, which was to take only Fozzie and Lars in the mini-mini van with us so as not to put Lars and Lamar through the stress of having to look at each other too much. 

Lamar got his solo walk with Mom in the morning, leaving us to wrestle only two large, strong, poorly leash trained, prey-driven dogs through the snow. This time, we ended up someplace in Maryland, no idea where. Florian saw some trail in a trail guide and thought we should go check it out, so we headed in the general direction.

And got lost before we even left the car, circling a few times past the spooky place where the turkey vultures must have found something nice and dead and decided to park themselves near it. 

Then we finally found our way to the trail, which it turned out was somewhere in Gathland State Park. 

A part of the Appalachian Trail where the snow was really high and we were glad we didn't subject Lamar to hiking up the steep incline with his arthritis. Difficult enough for the rest of us, who don't have Lamar's excuse of advanced old age. 

While we're talking about spooky, snowy hikes, there was another one we took right after another snowfall this winter. 

This one, I really don't know where the heck it was. I only know that it was seriously spooky, as someone had strung up old animal bones on the barren trees.

Who does that? 


In rural Maryland, I guess you've gotta be prepared for anything. 













It was still a nice hike, and got the dogs nice and tired walking through the snow.  

So Florian and Lars could cuddle up in the back of the mini-mini van on the way back,

and everyone was well-behaved and less annoying by the time we got home and rejoined Lamar, much to his relief.

How do YOU keep your dogs well-behaved during the cold of winter?