When I moved to NYC I brought along with me my own little nugget, Trixie. She was 3 years old and had not been with me for even a year when we moved out of spacious, yard and lake filled Michigan, to the concrete jungle of Brooklyn. As she nears her 10th Birthday, I really am impressed with how she has adapted to the change. A big difference with Brooklyn was the amount of time we got to spend together alone just wandering the streets during our walks. In Michigan, you can let your dog in the backyard for their daily discretion. In BK, you have to get out and walk those little ones, and Trixie gets walked three times a day. Each day we were meeting different people and neighbors, and now when we walk down the street, its a daily occurrence to hear kids and adults yell out her name as we walk by and run up to say hello.

Our walks and trips to the dog park became great times for us to spend one on one, and also a time for me to think or reflect while Trix did her best to find every spare chicken bone she could. As our time in New York went on, we changed apartments and found ourselves migrating closer and closer to dog friendly parks. The sub-community of a dog park is like none other. A mini-NYC-melting pot, the personalities were as diverse as the dog breeds, yet everyone, humans and dogs alike are interacting and socializing. Surrounded by cats most of her life, Trixie has always enjoyed running around with other dogs, if to nothing more than try and coerce dogs to stop fighting. Always a lover that one.

I know that our future holds many more walks and dog park visits (we even have a dog run area in our new apartment complex), but now we can open our options to include trips to the lake, hikes in the smokey mountains, and time spent together outside a 2 miles radius of our home. Ah, the joys of car ownership!

I’m pretty sure this a good representation of how Trixie feels about walks.

Live For Fun, Spread Joy, and Love!