Walk my dog twice a day

When Uma sees me grab her collar, she gets all super excited as always as she knows her imminent daily walk is about to happen. But once I open the door to go walking, she’ll sit and stay put and let me go ahead by myself! This is a problem even when there are no firecrackers going on —when there are firecrackers, we don’t go out. She won’t obey my command to come. So I actually have to leash her to drag her to walk with me. It is like I’m forcing her. Yesterday was particularly bad as she was trembling for a good four or five blocks :( The trembling stopped when another dog joined us in the walk, so she got distracted.

I have found that she feels better when we both walk —instead of me going on my bike. But I feel terrible for her; it seems that she feels I’m imposing a punishment, that it has ceased being the joyful experience it once was. It has become hard to walk her even once a day :(

Today we missed our morning walk (my fault). In the afternoon, two blocks into our walk, the sound of firecrackers scared her, and she ran back to our house. Incredibly, all the street dogs —who are accustomed to this— also took cover. Tomorrow I’ll make it up to her.

Walking Uma twice a day has proven harder than I had anticipated. With the almost-daily festivities here in Cholula, fire crackers are omnipresent especially in the early morning and late afternoon —exactly the times I habitually walk her.

All street dogs here are fairly accustomed to this, but she —being a foreigner to this “explosive” land— freaks out and wants nothing but to look for shelter under a table in our house.

We’ll have to find a way around this…

As Uma is getting older, I believe she likes it better when we go for more shorter walks than one long one. Today we already started with two walks, and she seemed quite happy :)

Well there’s a really stupid thing that keeps me from walking my dog so often: I sometimes don’t know what to wear for those quick walks, specially when I’m in my pyjamas or when I’m going somewhere and I’m wearing a formal dress. So I guess keeping a special outfit ready might be a solution. Something practical and not too ugly in case I accidently bump into someone.
My vanity is not gonna be an obstacle to my dog’s happiness anymore.