A Dog's Life

Yesterday, as it was Sunday, and a nice day we took the dogs out for a walk. We usually take them to the dog park at Bear Creek but you may remember that a couple of weeks ago we had a bad storm and the local area suffered a lot of flooding. (You can read my post here).

We didn't think the park would be open again yet so we had to find an alternative so we decided on a walking trail a little further away. To get there we had to drive passed the area where the dog park is and I think it will be a few weeks before the park is open again.

This isn't a great picture, taken as we drove passed but you can still see that most of the park is under water:

Bear in mind that the opening you can see to the left is actually a road, and what now looks like a big lake is usually a collection of football (soccer) pitches that any other weekend would be full of the hustle and bustle of the local Sunday league.

When we finally arrived at our alternative park, we decided that as it was our first visit, we'd start with one of the shorter trails.

The four of us (my Wife, the two dogs and I) set off happily looking for adventure (well, not really, more a leisurely Sunday morning walk) but we soon realised we weren't as prepared as we might have been.

The Houston heat soon picked up and realising we had left all of the bottled water back in the car we decided to keep going knowing that there were water fountains (for humans and dogs) at the spot we were already heading for.

The problem with having small dogs is they only have little legs, meaning that everywhere is much further to them. We realised they maybe weren't enjoying being outside quite as much as we'd hoped when they plonked themselves down under a tree and refused to go any further.

We managed to coax them out from their resting place but had to carry them part of the way until they could get some fluid on board.

On the way back, we made sure we made more stops so they could rest up and Boomer hitched a ride with me for part of the way. He's a lot older than busby and understandably got tired.

It was hard getting them to keep going whenever we stopped. They just lay down shaking and panting and looking at us mentally demanding to know what we were thinking!

Here are Boomer and Busby on one of their rest stops:

I actually enjoyed the walk, and we'd like to do it again, but next time we'll make sure we have water, sunscreen and mosquito spray!