A Beautiful Day...

Walking Mileage: 7.48

January Miles Walked: 31.48

Temperature upon departure: 67*

Back to sunshine and warm weather, actually they are saying that this little heat wave is record breaking even for the south. It went from FREEZING to Warm and Sunny in just a few days time. I prefer walking in the cold rather than the heat, but 67* was a nice change from the last couple months. I wore a tee shirt, my daypack and light pants and was comfortable with an easy, light sweat forming for most of our walk yesterday. We did back to back 7+ miles after a rather busy walking week, I wore my day pack filled with water. I accomplished making myself sore with this last week of almost 32 miles with the day pack, progressively getting packed with more water each day. I'm thinking next week I'll maybe even add a small weight to it, just for a little extra.

Something I was hoping to avoid also happened yesterday- Petey's pads on his right back paw started to give him (us) trouble. He was slow from the get-go and I just chalked it up to the mileage this week and him only walking a mile or so daily while we were gone over the break. But about 3 miles in, he started whimpering and shaking his foot and then slight limping. I thought we might have to call Matt to come pick us up on this perfect walking day. We stopped and I did an inspection- there was no bleeding or visible tears or cuts, but it was looking thin and very light pink where it is normally tougher looking and a grayish color. I decided to push on determined to get our miles in- I really wanted to break 30 miles for the week! But we veered in the direction of our house although continuing in a larger circle vs heading away like I had planned. It wasn't the loop I had planned but figured if his foot did get worse we could immediately head home or at least be easier to get to if we needed a ride. In the end we made it home without any further mishaps, and although tired, Petey was fine. I've read about something you can put on the pads to toughen them up, I'll let you know later what I find.

Blue was an ox as he usually is (when it is below 70*), plugging along never showing signs of fatigue, until the last mile that is. When he started dragging behind and when we stopped he was licking my backpack- he seems to have learned that is where the water is kept! He drank practically the whole water bottle himself!

On another note I've been thinking a lot about this blog- specially 'why' this blog and what am I trying to accomplish here. I looked around and didn't find many other 'walking' blogs (only 4 or 5) or blogs that are about walking with dogs (from a human perspective). The other walking blogs seemed to be a lot about losing weight. I don't want this to be a losing weight, get in shape kind of blog, or just ramblings. But it's really more about walking, seeing, and being with my dogs in Atlanta and myself. Which got me thinking about why I walk. Fitness it a nice part of it and since I'm planning to walk the Atlanta ING Marathon it has turned somewhat into 'training'. But the main reason I walk these days, I believe, it because I am dreaming of the Appalachian Trail. I think about it everyday, and realized that I could only do it with my dogs. Matt could go out tomorrow and do it with ease, I could do it by myself with a struggle, but there is no way I am conditioned, nor are the dogs to easily walk 10-20 miles a day. Therefore I realized that if we are really going to do it, attempt the AT- then we (me and the boys) have to get conditioned. With dogs, since they obviously can't tell you how they feel, it has to happen slowly over an extended time. There isn't a lot of discussion or how to out there about this subject either, but I know my boys better than anyone. What I'm trying to say is that this blog is kind of my log of this journey to condition me and two mixed breeds to walk from Maine to Georgia one day as best I can, living in Atlanta. Yeah, that's it, that's what I'm trying to do!