We got our dog Scarlett in the spring of 2000 (Scarlett is a miniature poodle). She was 10 or 12 weeks old, so by the time we went on our first camping trip of that season, she was only half grown. We had had a camper for a couple of years, and had taken to camping at places on bike trails and spending a good deal of our Saturday at least out on our bikes. So our first trip to Lanesboro that year, which is on the Root River bike trail, we had to figure out how to bring a dog along on a day of biking. We went to the bike store in town, and found a mesh basket. We put a towel in the basket and put Scarlett in the basket. It turned out that she felt that under extraordinary circumstances she ought to jump out of the basket. So Tom hit upon the idea, undoubtedly not approved by the SPCA, of threading a bungee cord through her collar and around the handlebars of the bike to cause her to stay, at least to some degree, attached to the bike. (Yes, there was one instance where she wound up dangling from the handlebars. Usually she'd just make to jump out and get tugged back in.)
As an aside, you know how you wind up giving your pet at least 12 names. Scarlett was already PupperDog, SweetieDog and CamperDog, now she also became known as BungeeDog.
The next summer she no longer fit in the basket, and that autumn we acquired a second dog, Tucker, who does not care for heights. I am quite certain that he would not like to be bungeed to a bike basket. He is also considerably more barrel-chested and denser than Scarlett (full grown he weighs more than she does, even though she's taller). When we biked, we would leave the dogs in the camper and bike for a couple hours and come back.
But I had this idea that we could get a bike trailer, the kind meant for small children, and trailer the dogs while we biked. I had seen other people doing it, usually with dogs a good deal larger than ours. I looked into the trailers, but they were rather expensive. It seemed like a lot spend on biking your dogs, especially if it didn't work out. Then Tom "rescued" one from the dumpster behind Goodwill one day. It sat in the garage for a couple seasons--occasionally I'd get it out and try to figure out how to make it work, but it became apparent that the trailer was in the dumpster for a reason. It was broken.
As I may have mentioned, we have a new camper. We managed to get a campsite at our favorite campground in Lanesboro for Memorial Day weekend, and I found myself thinking about the bike trailer again. It's pretty hilly on the Root River bike trail, and although I've never been in particularly good shape, I'm not in good shape now, and I'm a few years older than I was in 2001. I wasn't sure I could pull 35 pounds of dog and a trailer up a hill behind my bike. I'm usually doing well to get myself up hills. This is a problem with a lot of my ideas. They sound good on paper, but in the real world there are issues. (Earlier this year I thought it would be great to try biking to work one day, which is about 32 miles by car. Then I remembered wind.)
So we went into town this noon in the truck to get a bratwurst at Arv's, and we stopped at the bike store. They had a used bike trailer they were selling for $40, so we bought it. This afternoon we tried it out around the campground, with Tom pulling it and the two dogs inside. Things were going pretty well, one thing led to another, and we were out on the bike trail. The trailer is a nice light one, but even so I could tell that it was considerable work for Tom to pull it. I was wondering if the first bike trailer trip would be the last. We went from the campground to Lanesboro with one stop along the way, and about halfway back Tom stopped for a rest. So I said how about letting me try it? As it turned out, there weren't really any hills on the way back, so I was lucky there. We stopped in Whalan for some fabulous pie and made it home in one piece. I have to say, that when you're pulling a dog trailer downhill and into the wind, the wind hurts you a lot more than the downhill helps you. (What downhill?)
And how did the dogs do? Well, all right mostly, although Scarlett didn't like it much. She likes to be near me, touching me if possible but at least in sight. So she kept finding cracks and crevices where she could force her nose and head out to look back and see if I was there. (And possibly get out while she was at it.) But they stayed in and Scarlett only cried about it about a third of the time. (Tucker was mostly fine. I had a pillow in there, so he was happy. But the trailer bottom under him was only about an inch off the ground.)
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