Jerry L wrote:Hemoglobin..........I get your point.....no problem. My dogs aren't an issue. I was simply looking for dog friendly peaks.....not advice on dog maintenance. You may as well told me to make sure to take a rain jacket because it might rain. Your reply really had nothing to do with my simple request for local help. Take care.
For the love of... Every peak/hike is dog peak/hike except those in the National Park where dogs are not allowed. Unless its greater than class 3, its the dumb human that will be having the problems keeping up not the DOGS! So, that narrows down the number of peaks/hikes you can do to 99% of them. I have owned many dogs that could outrun me when I was on a mountain bike and they still had time left over to divert to go play in streams along the way. Before the Issaquah Highlands was put in there were gobs of miles of mountain biking trails on Grand Ridge and used to ride them daily.
As for hiking with dogs, and as a long time owner of dogs, its Hell. If it was an old dog, maybe, they are too lazy to be much of a problem. A young dog under 3 years old would be Hell itself and goes yapping at every little thing. In between? Depends on how many hours of every day you wish to spend training your dog so they aren't a problem. Heck, I generally don't take my dog out running/biking with me and he is VERY well behaved as I get tired of his alpha stand off tendancies with other dogs, though I just let the dogs figure it out and they do very quickly. Problems only occur when the stupid humans try to interfere and "help" their dogs. Dogs figure out the picking order in a bout 2 minutes flat if you just let them be themselves. Yea, your dog might get nipped on the ear. Big deal. Your life will be much happier afterwards though.
If I am out in the middle of nowhere and I know I won't be running into other dogs then I take him... very occasionally. Our last two dogs we had didn't have alpha tendances but were just a pain in the tail and were certainly NOT well behaved and tended to act like a pack when meeting other dogs. They were also very stupid. I know what dog barks mean along with other dog barks mannerisms as I have been around them my whole life where new dogs meet etc. Many don't and get "scared" and freak out and act as if a dog barking/growling means it is going to attack. Dogs that are going to attack generally won't ever bark. Likewise their tail will be straight out, not up, not down. Growl/snarl yes, bark? No. All these hyper folks about barking dogs, simply don't know one end of a dog from the other. They think owning a dog makes them an expert at dog/human interaction. Well it does in a single alpha dominant relationship without outside interference. Generally human dominant relationship, though I have seen it the other way around. When out in society this is not true. If your dog hasn't 'been around many other dogs/humans on a daily basis learning how not to be an ass as all of a sudden there are all these new things to get excited and bark about, DO NOT take them hiking as they won't know how to act and neither will the human dog owner either. Please do not take such dogs hiking for all of our sakes.
PS. Can we get the dumb WTA to quit ruining the mountain biking trails around the state? Latest one they are destroying is the one off of the top of Tiger Mountain to HWY 18.
Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 9:07 pm
