Bella's first hike...she cried the whole time!

[Sue, Murphy and Bella ()*o*()]

Some of you might know that we just moved to Arizona from Florida because of many things, but one in particular is that we love the beautiful mountains and trails to hike on.

I originally got Murphy to run and then hike with and have taken him everywhere and he has literally scaled mountains that go vertical and we slide down. No fear, just that look of "Are you serious?" No whining, no stopping to lick his paws, no compaints what so ever. Now we have Bella Bee, or Princess Bella. She is 6 months old and today was her turn to be introduced to hiking a mountain.

Well Miss Bella cried and whined and pulled and jumped and otherwise was just obnoxious the whole 90 minutes going up and coming back down. Granted we were with 3 other dogs and we thought she probably cried to be among them most of the time, but even when we walked her right in the middle of the pack she whined. I checked her paws, maybe she was still too tender-footed for this terrain....no problems there. Whine-Whine-Bark!  Maybe she needed more water,...gulp, gulp...done. More Whine-Whine-Whine-Jump! Maybe she wanted to go up front of the pack, nope...whine whine and keep looking back at everyone. OK, I give up...and am getting annoyed as this is just not how I planned it.

Time to do some training...."whine" ..."hush!". Jump..."Off!", whine...."Hush!" , no whine..."good girl" . This went on for over an hour. And finally in the last 3 minutes of this long and treacherous hike, she got calm and quiet and walked perfectly by my side. Maybe it was because she could sense the car by then and she knew this agony was over!

 

Poor Bella, I think I tramatized her!

[Melissa & Porter]

Strange.  Were the other dogs off leash, and she wasn't?  Porter has always stuck to me like glue so after one arm-aching hike with him on leash that was it for the leash.  He roams ahead or behind about 25 ft max and I go places where it is weird to have a dog ON leash.