Hiking with a Dog: 780 miles later

Now that we have officially passed the 1/3rd mark, I think this is an appropriate time to update our followers on what it has been like hiking with Sheila the Australian Mountain Dog. We've learned a few lessons along the way, and for anyone considering bringing their outdoor-loving dog on a long backpacking trip, you might want to take notes!

Hiking with Sheila is so rewarding, but it's also very challenging. Making sure she is happy and healthy is our number one priority. Having her along for the adventure adds one more variable to the equation of getting to Katahdin.

Food & Water

In the beginning, we were stopping every 15 minutes to give her water which made our average pace barely above 1 mph. After hiking 780+ miles, we usually stop every hour or hour and a half to water her, depending on the terrain and the temperature. Between the two of us, we carry 6.5L of water to make sure that we all have enough. She can easily drink about 2L of water per day (sometimes a half-liter or more while in camp in the morning and at night, and a liter throughout the day). Doggy dehydration is serious, so make sure to carry extra for your thirsty pooch. We don't let her drink from streams or rivers directly due to the risk of Giardia, though sometimes she will sneak in a few laps.

For food, she started out eating twice as much as she did at home (about 4 cups per day, 2 in the morning and 2 in camp at night). We didn't anticipate how hard it would be to actually get her to eat. She would eat a few handfuls in the morning, and maybe a few more when we stopped for lunch. We finally learned to accept that she wants to eat the majority of her food at night. Nowadays she eats 5 cups of food per day; 1 in the morning, 1 in the afternoon, and 3 at night. She still acts a little picky and we have to work pretty hard to convince her to eat. There was a 2 week period where she was losing weight and we were worried she would have to go home, but we started putting about a tablespoon of olive oil in her food at night and we haven't had a problem since (fingers crossed!) She carries about 5 days of food in her pack and we will usually carry an extra day for her, just in case. 

Ticks
Since the weather has warmed up, ticks have been our number one battle. She started out on a Seresto tick and flea collar, but we found that it just wasn't potent enough to fend off the explosion of ticks that seemed to come out of nowhere as we crossed into May. We were spending 1.5 to 2 hours per night picking off 30+ ticks (including the dreaded deer tick). When we decided to skip some of the trail to let Cheez-it's foot recover and to get back on track, we switched to the Preventic collar and within 48 hours all of the ticks that were attached to her were dried up and dead! We will see how the new collar works once we are back on the trail, but for now, we are very happy with the switch. The Seresto collar works supposedly for 6 months and the Preventic is effective for only 3 months, but we think this is the best move. I will report when we return! We are also working with Tarptent to see about getting a "dog bivy" that will fit in our vestibule and keep her separated from us while keeping her from running off after an animal in the middle of the night. A big problem we were having with the ticks is that the live ticks would crawl off of her and onto us in the middle of the night. We are hoping that the fast acting Preventic will help solve some of this problem.

Wild Animals
Sheila is a herding dog by instinct. If she spots an animal in the woods and it just so happens to be running away, she really wants to chase it. Thankfully, she has only bolted off once after some deer. She also chased a bird that was flying in the sky in the Grayson Highlands. On that note, Sheila didn't seem to mind the ponies until we started making a big about them. Oh! She chased the goats at Woods Hole Hostel and we had to turn off the electric fence to get her back out. Thank goodness she actually listens to us when we yell at her.

We have come across one rattlesnake so far, but we know they become more common in PA. A guy named Bangarang told us about a rattlesnake vaccine you can get out west, but the few veterinarians we asked here on the east coast have never heard of it. Just be careful if you chose to hike with your dog in rattlesnake areas. Always keep your dog close and keep an eye out for any snake that may be on the trail or just off the trail. Rattlesnakes will often let you know if you're too close, but it's best not to push your luck.

Hostels & Town Stays
We have been very lucky at each hostel we've stayed at in that they have let us leave Sheila in the room while we run any errands. This is not a privilege, so always ask if it is okay. And don't leave your dog if you know that they are prone to whining or could become destructive if left alone. It really helps to hike as a pair if you take your dog, that way one of you can hang outside with the dog while the other runs into the store or orders food. Town seems to stress Sheila out immensely. The noise of cars and motorcycles really freaks her out after a week or two in the woods. We find that minimizing our time in town minimizes her stress.

Gear
Sheila's gear has been holding up wonderfully. Her saddlebags are showing some wear from her rubbing up against rocks and things, but I'm sure that they will survive for the rest of the trip. We have had a spot of trouble with the fit of the pack, causeing the whole thing to slide forward as we were coming down a steep descent, but I think the issue was more user error than a design flaw. I am really sad to hear that Granite Gear is discontinuing the Long Howl, because it's the only one we've found with this type of design and we prefer it much more than the typical dog packs.

For hiking in snow, I definitely recommend the dogbooties.com fleece booties. They are cheap and they get the job done. I was very hesitant about the hard-soled booties you can buy for your dog because none of them seemed to fit quite right and they seemed like they might do more harm than good in the long run. I just felt like they didn't allow her foot to move naturally, so when we found these simple fleece socks I was really excited. The fleece insulated her pawpads from the snow and slush while keeping the ice from building up between her toes and allowing her to walk naturally. I don't worry about rocks so much, though I'm sure she gets tired of walking on them (just like us!) After a long day on rocks, we usually rub her pads down with Musher's Secret to help nourish them. She loves a good footrub at the end of the day. These booties combined with the moisturizing power of Musher's Secret have helped to keep Sheila's feet happy and healthy.

A tough decision...
Overall, we would not take her on another long-distance backpacking trip. We would take her out for a week or so at a time, but being on the trail for 6 months with your dog is a lot of extra hard work. If you're considering taking Fido for a long hike, be mentally prepared to spend a few hours a day taking care of your pet. If you aren't committed to the idea of putting your animal first in every situation, then don't bring them along. It has been very tough for us to continue on with her because on one hand we know she is having a blast, but on the other hand the risk to her health from tick-borne disease is real and has really been weighing on my mind. 

For now, she will continue to hike with us and she will continue to steal the hearts of the hikers around her (including ours!) but if this new medication seems less than effective, we might end up taking her off-trail. Just please, please be a responsible pet owner if you decide that you are up to the challenge! If you have any questions, please feel free to comment below or send us an email to endlessfootpath@gmail.com

Ticks

An unfortunate result from our overnight on the Florida Trail was that Sheila the dog got ticks. Lots of ticks. Hundreds of them! She was just completely infested, and her hair is so long and thick it was really almost impossible to pick them all off. Not to mention they were in the larval portion of their life-stage, so they were no bigger than the tip of a pencil. So we spent Sunday afternoon at the vet getting her treated and online trying to figure out what to do about ticks on the trail. I've learned a lot about ticks and preventative measures in that time, so I wanted to share the knowledge I aggregated for anyone else looking for this information.

What is a tick and why are they bad?
Ticks are a member of the arachnid family, a relative of spiders. There are many different species of ticks found across the country and there are a few that are known to spread disease. These are the ticks that we humans worry about the most. These hard-bodied ticks include the blacklegged or deer tick, the american dog tick, the brown dog tick, Gulf Coast tick, Rocky Mountain wood tick, Pacific Coast tick, and the lone star tick. These ticks can carry a wide array of diseases, most notably Lyme disease, rocky mountain spotted fever, anaplasmosis, and ehrlichiosis. The most common symptoms of tick-borne disease are fevers/chills, aches and pains, and sometimes a distinctive rash (a bulls-eye or spots).

"Bulls-eye" rash most commonly associated with Lyme disease. Curtesy of the CDC

Ticks undergo a complex lifecycle. Most ticks go through four life stages: egg, six-legged larva, eight-legged nymph, and adult. After hatching from the eggs, ticks must eat blood at every stage to survive. Ticks that require this many hosts can take up to three years to complete their full life cycle, and most will die because they don't find a host for their next feeding. This infographic from the CDC illustrates the lifecycle of a typical deer tick.

Lifecycle of a blacklegged tick

Now, we were hiking in early fall/late summer in Central Florida, which means that almost every species of hard-bodied tick could have been crawling around the forest floor. I did manage to pick a few off of her and identify the species of tick. Each had six legs, and a light colored area on the abdomen. I have decided that the ticks that covered Sheila's legs and belly were larval Lone Star ticks. Here is what just a small section of her foreleg with ticks attached to get a better idea of what we were dealing with. Below that is a shot of the alcohol container we used to preserve some of the ticks in, just in case any tick-born illness developed. Note that this many ticks came from just one of her forelegs.

Each black dot is a tick

Larval stage Lone Star ticks that I pulled off of Sheila

I did find a few nymph stage ticks on the bottom of her paws, but I wasn't able to get a good shot of them.

When your dog is infested after a hike, what do you do?
Me? I panicked. I felt like such an awful dog-mom. I made the mistake of thinking that her Trifexis protected her from ticks, so coming home Sunday evening was a harsh reality to face. We stopped by the Tractor Supply and picked up a kennel dip (17% pemethrin, interestingly enough!) and some tick shampoo that would be a bit more gentle on her sensitive skin. I gave her bath and tried to soothe her worried look. I then decided that I couldn't take chances and brought her to our local Banfield Pet Hospital inside of Petsmart. After a few suggestions of having to shave the dog, which I was adamantly against, the vet suggested we use the Preventic collar. He suggested that some studies have shown that the Preventic collar starts killing ticks within 48 hours which would help minimize any risk of disease transmission. At $18.99 this was the option for us! We also opted to have her vaccinated against Lyme and put on a cycle of doxicylin to further protect against infection.

A note about the dose of doxi… we found out later through Tick Encounter Resource from the University of Rhode Island, that larval Lone Star ticks do not transmit disease, though nymph stage ticks may transmit disease. This was mainly a preventative measure because I am a worrier.

The Preventic collar did seem to kill all of her ticks within about 48-72 hours, though it left the ticks dead bodies attached to her which fell off easily after a good brushing. After reading more about the different tick preventatives, we decided that Preventic isn't our best bet while actually hiking the trail.

Types of tick preventative
There are so many types of tick preventative out there, it can be a little overwhelming. Thankfully, a few sites out there have done all of the hard work and summed up each product including active ingredient, application type and even what treatments are effective against which ticks!

Information gathered from marvistavet.com

Information gathered from marvistavet.com

What's the best tick protection for dogs on a thru-hike?
The answer to this varies, as no two dogs are the same. For us, topical treatments do not work well due to the nature of Sheila's thick coat. We are personally going to be using a Seresto collar, which isn't listed above. This collar's main ingredients are imidacloprid and flumethrin, it's safe for dogs and cats, it lasts 8 months,  it is water resistant, reaches 97% effectiveness in 48 hours against deer and lone star ticks, and is also effective against fleas. It is a relatively expensive collar. We were quoted around $50 from a local vet.

We are mainly interested in this collar because of the 8 month effectiveness, that way we can put it on her early and keep it on well after the hike. I was leaning toward the Scalibor collar, but it doesn't seem to be offered in the states anymore.


A week and a half later, Sheila is happy and healthy with no symptoms of tick-borne illness. Our little incident really opened up my eyes to the dangers of ticks on the trail. I just hope that our good luck will continue as we set out on the AT early next year!

I hope this is helpful to anyone looking for this sort of information. If you have questions or comments, please feel free to submit them below! Thanks for reading!