Great trail...SO many fails!

What started off as a great hike, ended with me asking if we could just go home.

It was NOT our day...at all.

This past weekend we went on one of our typical weekend hikes. We wanted to do a fun easy hike, but one that was a little longer than what we usually do to get our steps in and really exercise Brodie! Plus it was my first hike bringing my camera and I didn't want anything to happen to it...

Well we found a great trail on AllTrails and decided to check it out! Schooley's Mountain County Park it was! We parked off of Fairview Ave and started our hike from there. Parts of our hike were part of Patriots Path!

The hike was clearly marked with various color trail markers and was clearly well maintained, unlike some of the other hikes and trails Dan has taken us on. Brodie and I tend to blindly follow Dan on whatever trails he finds. Some turn out great like this one...others not so much.

Like I said, the hike started out GREAT! With the trail well marked and maintained, it was fun and easy. We had some great wins with Brodie's training too! He was able to do a stand/stay cue long enough for us to get some great pictures. And then he came to us when we recalled! It was an awesome feeling to know he was doing well with his training!

But that didn't last very long...**cue Mom doing a face palm while recalling all of the fails that happened on the rest of the trail**

After some good sniffs, we got to a thinner part of the trail that was a pretty steep vertical incline. We heard people coming down, but couldn't see them so we decided to start heading up. Well in all of his leash reactivity glory, as the women got close and started to walk past us, Brodie had a reactive outburst and scared one of the hikers. She then fell...DON'T WORRY! She was okay! I made sure of it! Now all Brodie did was bark and pull, so nothing aggressive, but still not what we wanted to see after all those training wins at the beginning of our hike. We did however look back at what happened and realized we may have pushed him too close to his threshold. We didn't have a single outburst after that! But that's because we took note, realized how to help the problem, and gave Brodie a wider threshold as people passed. Fail on the trail #1...

After that incident, we spent some of our hike making a game plan for future training and what we could do for our boy, all the while he was doing a great job again! After all, he's most at home in the woods! (BackwoodsBrodie on Instagram...Get it?!) Even with his allergies, he's still in heaven when out on a hiking trail! Plus the lake was beautiful!

The trail then led us around the lake! It was extra BEAUTIFUL with all the fall foliage! It also gave us a BUNCH of training opportunities with tons of dogs and people around checking out the lake and the shorter trails that focused just on the lake itself. We walked around The Boathouse and took the floating bridge dock across the lake! Brodie rocked the floating dock!

We made our way around The Lodge, took a few wrong turns, but ended up back on the right trail! We weren't just back on the right trail, but Brodie was back to listening to every command and was enjoying taking in his environment! He pretty much rocked the whole rest of the hike. We got to see the top of the waterfall before we made our way down to the bottom!

I mean, look how happy these two look! I can't take it sometimes how connected we all are less than a year into our lives together. It makes me appreciate our little family.

And then came the rest of our fails...the fails on the trail. Shortly after Brodie pretended to be a mountain goat, we had to make our way down a steep (super steep) part of the trail. Dan and Brodie went down first, and I have to say, Brodie KILLED it! He listened to every single "wait" and "slow down" cue Dan gave him! But then it was my turn. I made it all the way down to the last two steps before I fell. Slipped and went right down hard on my back...which is where the camera was. And yup! You guessed it...I broke the lens. Lesson learned about where to put the camera on descents like that, but I was less than happy with myself. What else could go wrong on this hike? ...I literally said that out loud...I'm dumb.

Moral of the story: Don't put things out into the universe.

I didn't get pictures of the waterfalls or the look out, but that's okay! I figured we can always do another trail here and get them then! Hikes are our favorite after all...but only in dry weather. The last fail on our hike was the rain that started while we were eating lunch at the look out. Just as I was starting to feel better about Brodie's fail and my own fail, it started raining. I just wanted to go home.

The bright side of it though, Brodie was SO happy! He was loving it. There were other hikers out who ALSO didn't think it was supposed to rain and we bonded over that! The end of the hike ended up being so much fun-even with the rain!

Biggest take away-take it all one step at a time and enjoy the view around you!

Fails on the trail can be surrounded by beauty...you just have to look to find it.