Share It Sunday, Travels With Bailey!

Nominated by last week's guest blogger Wag N Woofs!

Crazy Pants

I realized that I didn't post our January update on our total mileage last week even though it was the last Friday in January. In January 2014, we hadn't gotten into the habit of daily walking yet--if it was really cold or I was really tired, we'd take a day off--and we totaled 49.05 miles. This year, our January mileage was 72.96 miles, so we're off to a great start towards our goal this year.

Despite our great start, it's still a drastic decrease from the 3-mile/day average we ended 2014 with. After over a foot of snow got dumped on us Sunday night, we lost some more of our routes, so we only logged 13.63 miles this week--but we're celebrating that because yesterday, it didn't get above 12 degrees and with Barley's boots we made it 1.23 miles!

These are the weather conditions from our actual walk.

Barley might have new boots in her wardrobe, but her favorite winter wardrobe accessory to wear are her crazy pants. Like The Emperor's New Clothes, these crazy pants are invisible.

I'm not wearing any pants, Mom!

To the trained eye, though, the crazy pants are painfully obvious. Sometimes, she wears them to walk.  She gets into a zone of her own and even if I have the best treats in the world, she isn't interested in heeling and she wants to tug on her leash. She wants to climb on every snow mountain that the plow has created in our parking lot.

The crazy pants have inspired Barley to become a cheater at some of her favorite games: she realized that if she put her treat ball into a box that it was less work to get treats than if she has to follow it around the whole apartment.

Barley's worn her crazy pants to agility every week this entire session. She gets the zoomies at the drop of a hat--she starts off running the course and then just gets so excited that she can't stop running. 

My favorite moment, though, was when we were training the broad jump this week. Barley's seen the broad jump a few times--usually she doesn't get to excited about jumps of any kind, she'll do them, but she much prefers the dog walk, tunnels, and weaves and she lives for the teeter. For some reason, this week, Barley was all about the broad jump. She was so excited that she couldn't even sit. Her ears were perked and she just crouched and you could see every muscle just twitching with anticipation. As soon as I unclipped her leash, she was flying through the air. Every time our turn came up again, she got more and more excited. Our trainer looked at her, laughed, and said, "Barley looks like she's just heard about a party and she can't get there fast enough." That describes Barley's philosophy on life better than I ever could have done myself.

I might be wearing crazy pants, but at least I'm not wearing that silly hood, Mom!

The crazy pants have made life more fun and exciting these last few weeks--and I'm so very glad that we have agility class with understanding classmates and a trainer that find the crazy pants adorable rather than annoying and time-consuming--but we're very much looking forward to spring: the crazy shorts are much easier to handle.

Who wants spring? Snow makes the whole world my playground.

Barley The Border Collie!

Continuing to give something back on 'Share It Sunday'
We all share and we grow together.
Pop over and say hello and make a new friend.

From the author Molly The Wally.