dog walking group

6 Comments January 17, 2013 peacelovefoster

If you don’t remember my feelings on structured group dog walks, let me remind you: I LOVE THEM. I also love when they’re in cool places with lots of cool people, which was exactly what happened on Saturday.

There are all sorts of fun events that brought Pittie Trails and the Animal Welfare League of Arlington’s Pit Crew together for a joint walk this weekend. Remember the handsome dog I transported up to Animal Farm Foundation with me back in September? His name was Gaston and he was from AWLA, so I started following their Pit Crew Facebook page a while back (I also just love shelters that have groups dedicated to helping their pitties!). Then I ran into one of their members at Bully Paws’ Pit Bull Awareness Day event, and we got to talking about our two dog walking groups. Fast forward a few months, and here we were doing a joint walk!

They decided on a spot downtown by the Washington Nationals stadium (ah, the perks of living in the nation’s capitol). The AWLA Pit Crew has seriously got their act together for these walks, making sure that each dog has the best experience possible no matter what level of reactivity they are around other dogs. This particular walking spot was vetted for adequate space and safety from off-leash dogs (which are also intercepted by the dog-less walkers in the event that they do come across any). It is great that their walks are so structured, because sixteen dogs showed up for this one!

We had a great time in the gorgeous uncharacteristically warm weather, and, as far as I know, had no major dog issues! I highly recommend anyone interested in socializing their dog more in a safe, positive way sign up for these walks with the Pit Crew (oh, and it helps if you’re in the DC/MD/VA area – they generally stick to VA). You can email them at pitcrew@awla.org for more information about their walks and group in general. They also do fun human-only social outings, so it’s a great group to get involved in.

Here are some pictures from the walk!

When I began writing this post, I gushed about the dog below, Willow, who is an adoptable pup from AWLA that joined us on the walk. Turns out she got adopted to her forever home on Monday! Yay Willow!

Remember, if you want to join the walking group, email pitcrew@awla.org. Hope to see you at the next one!

8 Comments February 9, 2012 peacelovefoster

You all had some really great guesses about what the two pictures in yesterday’s post had in common. The answer? They were both from the first ever Pittie Trails hike!

We had a great, great time! There were nine dogs total who came out to Rachel Carson Conservation Park last weekend. From the top left: Baxter, Lily, Athena, Reese (with the backpack), Cotton (gray & white), Nelly, Penny (pink collar), Stella, and McMuffin (who is for adoption!).

All of them were extremely well behaved, even while working on different manners.

Seeing all the dogs walking together really demonstrated how valuable things like this can be. It exposes the dogs to other dogs in a safe and controlled group, while also adding in distractions. Sometimes the distractions are far from anything they’d ever come across otherwise, like:

A horse! We came across very few other people on the trail, but one of which was this pair.

The poor horse “doesn’t like dogs” according to the rider, and you can imagine what we expected the dogs to think about the horse. Luckily, though, we were on a spot on the trail that everyone could get far off the path (which they did quickly and quietly because everyone was so awesome!). The horse snorted and pranced by us, visibly unhappy but tolerant. The dogs all did great, except I think for Athena who sent out a few barks expressing the way she felt – understandably!

Other than that, it was nothing but woods, creeks, and fields. The weather was perfect, and I think a good time was had by all! The trail was a little short, so I think a few dogs ended up energy to spare – but we are really excited to start branching out to new locations after we get the group going. Hopefully we can get to an area by everyone who wants to join.

Thanks so much to everyone who came out for the first hike!

We don’t have the next one scheduled yet, but stay tuned to the Pittie Trails Facebook page for the coming schedule. Also, check out the Facebook page in the next few days to see the photo album of all the pictures from this trip. Email pittietrails@gmail.com if you have any questions about coming on hikes with us – we’d love to have you.