Getting Hot

It's getting hot around here.

I hate to complain. It's really been a lovely spring. After a seriously cold December and January (with what seemed like more than our fair share of snow and ice) our "winter" ended in February when the temperatures rose enough so light jackets were all we needed to keep comfortable, at most. The darkened skies in the mornings and late afternoons belied what our other senses were telling us, which was that spring should have been in full-bloom. B.B. and I started taking advantage of the nice weather as soon as possible. We bought a couple clip-on lights for her leash and began taking evening walks down High House Road where the street lights do a decent job of keeping us well-lit in the winter's dark evenings. We've been keeping up a good steady routine ever since. But I fear that's about to end.

Last summer we walked steadily through June, but just a little after the July 4th weekend, during a routine trek home from Bond Park (in the middle of Cary and reachable from our house almost exclusively through greenway trails — with the exception of a few side streets needed to get from one trail to another — about six walking miles from where we live) we both got a little over-heated.

Now, B.B. is really not one to complain, which is why I need to be extra careful with her. She's an Alaskan sled dog, after all, and her heavy coat is meant specifically to keep her warm pulling packs across a frozen tundra. She doesn't mind the heat, per se, but I know that it's not good for her. We have a little four foot plastic wading pool (Wal-Mart, $8) that K fills for me when we walk in the summer. She usually has it waiting on the driveway for us when we get home from a particularly hot walk, with maybe 8" of water in it. B.B. just walks right over and lies down in it. She seems to enjoy the soak, and I know it helps regulate her body temperature. I usually soak my feet for a bit and then (as long as she's wet anyway) give her a little shampoo.

But still, we don't walk much past the low 80's. That trek home from Bond Park last July was a little scary. First of all, it got hotter than I realized it would get, and I started feeling overheated. Which is unusual for me. I grew up in the heat, spent my childhood in South Carolina and my teenage (to early-20's) years in Pensacola, Florida, and Alabama. So I'm used to heat and humidity. Granted, after that I spent 10 years living in the Mid-West, so one could argue that my blood thickened while I was away, but I've been back for 5 years and I still enjoy being outside in the heat. (K generally thinks I'm crazy in that regard.)

So a little heat doesn't bother me too much, but there we were, climbing the last big hill of the walk, maybe a half-mile away from home, and I suddenly felt like I needed to rest. Seriously. We found a tree just off the path with plenty of shade and pine straw for us to sit on and we both plopped down. I was close to the road, so I could have called K to come get us, but I just figured we'd rest a bit and move on. B.B., after all, looked just fine. I felt a little cooked, but after 5-10 minutes in the shade, I figured we were good to go. B.B., however, didn't want to get up. And that was a first (probably ever) for her. She was panting, but not more so than usual, and felt hot, but again not more so than usual. We sat for maybe another half hour and cooled off. After that she was fine and ready to go. We schlepped the last half mile and cooled our jets in the kiddie pool. But that was the last walk we took until September. Yep, I took 2 months off, and, boy did I miss it.

I don't really have any pictures of our short walk to share,
but this little guy had to wait outside while his owner went
in to get bagels. Collectively, everybody now: "Awww..."

To bring my rambling full circle, I'm dreading the "dog days" of summer when we will either forgo our walks altogether or at the very most limit them to the earliest hours of the morning. The days are getting hotter, and the last half of May certainly seems to have leap-frogged the warm mid-spring temperatures directly into the heat of summer. I've got a number of walking/hiking goals with B.B. that I want to achieve (more on that later) but I fear we may have to wait for fall.

So today, we decided to keep it simple. K and I went to Panera Bread for breakfast, about 4 miles from home, took B.B. with us, and after our little breakfast sandwiches and coffee (and B.B.'s cup of ice for crunching), K drove off and B.B. and I walked home. One of my goals is to walk across Cary. I've got a path all drawn up that will take us from one side to the other (about 12 miles) mostly through trails and greenways. But Cary itself is actually quite a nice place to walk just along the sidewalks. We walked down Cary Blvd to High House and then west to home. It was warm, but not too hot. B.B. did just fine. She plopped down on one of the A/C vents when we got home, but that hour-long walk didn't do much to curb her energy levels later in the day.