
Luka is the best dog ever. And she’s in shape. She kicked my booty today on what I thought would be a simple hike. 1.3 miles…that was it..how hard could it be? Well if the 1.3 miles is straight up, it’s harder than you think. And if you’re a bit out of shape, it’s harder still.
Luka is in phenomenal shape. She went and up and down that trail always coming back to me with looks of encouragement..”Are you coming?” “Let’s just see what’s around the corner; just one more corner, you can do it!””Hey, I’ve doubled back for you at least 30 times, if I can do it, you can too, keep going.”

We took the lookout trail in Randolph. It’s great because it offers a view of the Presidential Range and the trailhead is right across the road from a nice lake for after hike swimming.
I need to get into better aerobic shape; seriously, I thought I was having a heart attack at one point I was so winded. I then decided that I needed to slow down and not necessarily keep Luka’s pace. She’s got four legs; I’ve only got two. The viewpoint was smaller than I had expected, but it was lovely and I felt relatively safe so high up. We were high!

Down the trail was much quicker and Luka ran, which meant that I ran. It was actually pretty fun. I love running (well…jogging, or plodding quickly) down trails. We were rewarded with beautiful flowers and a quick and wonderful dip in Durand Lake.
I can honestly say, if I hadn’t had Luka with me, I probably wouldn’t have made it to the viewpoint. She keeps me going..in fact when we (I mean I) were done, Luka was ready for more.