Winter dog walks- my ruff reality ?

When I dreamt about getting my own dog, I would imagine long walks in the countryside, the sun shining on my face and everything being perfect and wonderful. The truth is, these types of dog walks form only a very very small percent of mine and Clover’s adventures together.

Before getting Clover, Summer was by far my favourite month. The hotter the weather the better. Nowadays, if it’s above 20 degrees then I’m panicking that she’s too hot or that she can’t breathe and I’m out buying cool mats, cooling bandanas (yep, really!), making doggy ice cubes and buying her paddling pool (do I have a dog or a child?!). So Summer isn’t the perfect walking weather that I would have hoped for. Autumn is very rainy and Winter is cold and miserable. Spring is best. Warm enough to walk a good distance in the sun but still cool enough not to worry about Clover overheating. I hadn’t thought of any of this prior to dog ownership. I’d just envisaged that every dog walk would be perfect and lovely. It isn’t.

The weather currently is very frustrating. We’ve had so much rain that the rivers have caused bad flooding in the fields around us, so we can’t do our usual long walks. The nights are beginning to get lighter but during Winter it’s dark when I finish work, so we have to stick to dull lead walks around the roads with street lights which is very boring for the both of us. Of a weekend, we manage to do longer walks round the fields that aren’t flooded, which is much more fun for both of us. But there is mud. There is so much bloody mud.

Subscribe below to get updates whenever a new post goes live!

The issue with the dark nights and the mud baths in the fields is that Clover isn’t particularly a ball or stick loving dog. She’ll play fetch for a couple of throws and then she’s bored and leaves it, so I can’t exercise her properly by just standing in a park throwing something for her to run after and bring back. She used to play really well with other dogs and so going to the local park and letting her run around was always a good option. She still does play well with other dogs, but she’s just not quite as interested now she’s a bit older. So, if I want to make sure that Clover is walked properly and exercised enough, we have to walk a good distance. Before her cruciate ligament injury (which you can read about on our other post ‘dog cruciate ligament disease- my ruff reality’ ) Clover would walk miles. She would happily do 15km with me of an afternoon. We’d go out for hours together and she’d come home tired and happy and I would finally get a bit of peace from my floppy eared Tasmanian devil. We are careful not to do anywhere near that distance these days, but realistically she still needs a good 7km-8km per day in order to be tired and happy. So, every night we plod around the boring streets in the cold, and every weekend I stick on my wellies or my walking boots and we go out on a proper adventure. Across the muddy fields, through some of the flood water and the puddles, and we walk. But it’s not the wonderful perfect walk I had always envisaged. It’s cold, it’s damp and truthfully, its not that enjoyable.

When it’s raining is the worst. I won’t force Clover out if it’s raining heavily, but play time in the house just isn’t enough for her so whenever there is a break in the rain, or if the heavy rain turns to drizzle, best believe were going out (whether I like it or not!). Today, there was no rain, in fact it was actually glorious sunshine (although still cold), which was a positive. But the fields were still soggy, even by the afternoon. The grass underfoot was wet and the mud was slippy and thick. Darling Clover took the opportunity not only to run around in the mud, but also to roll in it. So, bath time was on the cards as soon as we got home. I don’t mind Clover running in the puddles and I don’t really mind her rolling it in either if that’s what makes her happy. It just means that, during winter and autumn months, I have to factor in the potential need for a bath at the end of the walk when I’m trying to plan my day. It’s not the end of the world, and we always figure it out, but it’s a far cry from the perfect sunshine walks I had expected.