Spring is Upon Us

Our famous Oregon rain finally arrived this year. Our winter was weirdly dry and sunny, which was enjoyable in the moment, but made everyone worry about drought. The past few weeks now, though, we've been trying to make up for the rest of the dry winter. Between the sun to make things grow and the rain to green things up, Oregon is pretty officially in spring now.

Stoic faces

The park we like to go to has gravel and dirt trails through the woods, as well as a paved path through the sports fields. As of the beginning of April, the sports fields are off limits to off leash dogs. Baseball, softball, soccer, and other sports are starting up, and they both don't want dogs interfering during practices and games, and don't want irresponsible people with off leash dogs letting their dogs poop on the sport fields and then not pick it up. I totally understand, since I wouldn't want to be running to catch a fly ball and slip in a big pile of dog poop. But the long and short of it is that if we want to walk off leash, we have to hit the trails.

The vegetation everywhere has been growing like crazy, and greening up with all our rain. This path was mostly dead and brown even just a couple weeks ago (though I hear that dead and brown in Oregon is still greener than a lot of places in the world).

"Okay"

When we go off leash to the sports fields in the winter, the dogs spend a lot of time running, chasing each other, and wrestling. Pallo loves to roll in the grass and grunt. Sometimes we bring toys and spend some time playing fetch in the open fields.

The trails are different. With the exception of one trail, they are all pretty narrow, lined with heavy woods, and mostly covered by trees above. Instead of running and wrestling, the dogs tend to spend time trotting down the trail, sniffing in the brush, and looking for squirrels. I feel like it takes longer to get the dogs tired this way, but that when we do get back to the car, they have worked both physically and mentally, what with all the sniffing and squirrel hunting.

Pallo was too busy sniffing to come back when I stopped for a picture. 

As a plus side, the trees over the trails makes it easier to walk there in the rain without getting totally soaked. These photos are from our walk earlier this week. This particular day had rolling thunderstorms. It would be clear and sunny for a bit, then the heavy clouds would come in, and it would pour. Then it would clear up, then the clouds would roll in, and it would pour, rinse, repeat.

Classic Oregon greenery and trees

If you look close in the photo above, you can see that where Koira is standing in the sun is also being rained on. It stayed sunny for the rest of our walk from this point, but it kept raining. But that's okay. I've always said I live in Oregon for the green, and the price we have to pay for that is rain. I'll pay it gladly. A little rain never hurt anyone.