Take a walk through the woods with us

Hey everyone! How the heck is it already May?! Oh well, one month closer to fall dryland season!

It’s been around 80 degrees here still, with the trend continuing. Because of the warmer weather, we’ve been waiting until the evening to take Pence out to free run or on a walk because of the heat.

Yesterday, we went on a little adventure to a nearby mountain bike trail, which we like to use for training runs on the scooter when it’s cooler out.

Pence always seems excited to when we’re getting ready to go somewhere. But as soon as she gets into the car, she’s gets super anxious still. She pants hard and her whole body shakes. Boo did this his first few car rides, but eventually grew to love the car. It seems like Pence is taking a little longer to get used to it.

When we arrived at the trail, it was packed with people! We’ve only ever seen one other person out there, but there were about a dozen vehicles in the parking lot yesterday.

We began our walk by heading down the maintenance road, thinking that we wouldn’t run into anyone there, because everyone should be on the mountain bike trails. We were wrong lol. Not even a minute into our walk, we had three mountain bikers pass us head on. They were very cool about it though!

As I mentioned in a previous newsletter, sled dogs don’t walk well on leashes. However, Pence was doing so well at the beginning of the walk. She was actually walking at more of a leisurely pace and sniffing all the new smells. I was proud of her!

However, once the mountain bikers passed us, it seemed to spook her and her whole demeanor changed. From there on, she was pulling on the leash. She didn’t know where she was going, but she wanted to get there fast.

About halfway through our walk, we ran into a couple who were walking a big dog. They were coming up behind us and Pence picked up her pace a little bit. They never did pass us, but she kept the dog in the corner of her eye.

The mosquitos started to get bad, so we turned around headed back to the vehicle. Not a super eventful or exciting walk, but it was a beautiful evening and it was nice to get Pence out of the neighborhood for her walk. Hopefully this trail isn’t this busy all summer, but we’ll just have to keep checking back!

Though it wasn’t a long walk, we did get to play with the drone a bit more and record parts of our trail walk! (see the video below)

It was a great first test of using the auto track feature on the camera. However, when we start getting to run the dogs again, we likely won’t be able to use the drone on this trail. While I (Riley) could keep up and maneuver around tree limbs fine while at a walking pace, there’s no way it can happen at a run.

The path is just too narrow to avoid hitting any limbs moving at that speed.

So the trail has it’s pros and cons. Ideally we’d love to find a similar trail system that’s a little more secluded and maybe a bit wider to cater to all our needs. But hey, sometimes we just have to make-do with what we’ve got. That’s the whole spirit of urban mushing!

Good news: Boo will be coming back to our house on Saturday! We’re really interested to see how he reacts to the drone. I (Hannah) could see him being terrified of it or being super playful and trying to catch it. It could go either way lol.

Riley’s bet is on him freaking out as soon as the drone launches, even if he’s 30 feet away.

Hopefully we can get out to the fields again to free run with him and fly the drone around him before the farmers plant! Just like anything with the dogs, it’s good to get them accustomed to new things as much as possible. So the more we can get them used to the noise of the drone before we start running again, the better!

This week’s video!

Like we mentioned, we recorded most of our walk yesterday, and wow was it a beautiful evening (minus the mosquitos)! The trail and surrounding woods were so full of green, the sun was setting and it was very calm out.

Add in some soothing music while we walk, and you’ve got the perfect serotonin boost to start your Friday!

We’ve got everything in the video: some wide shots showing off the woods/trail, up-front close ups of Pence, follow-behind shots letting you feel like you’re right there with us.

Click the button below or scroll to the bottom of the newsletter to access the video:

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