Thru Hiking with a Dog on the Appalachian Trail

We will be bringing Sammy, our youngest dog, with us on our thru hike of the Appalachian Trail. He is a 38lb red heeler mix that we adopted last August. He is such a character and full of energy! We are getting him all geared up for the trip and even bought him special dog food. For those looking to do the same with their dog, here is what we have learned to prepare our little fur baby for the trip!

With this being our first thru hike we did quite a bit of research on the particulars of bringing a dog. ​

We spoke with our vet and read a lot of blogs and forums from people who have been thru hiking with their dog before. Here are the highlights of what we learned:

• Pay attention to your dog and if they are limping or struggling. Make sure to check their paws regularly for hot spots and apply Mushers Wax or something similar regularly so their paws stay in good shape.
• Dogs don’t adapt the same way humans do to the trail so 20 miles a day, day after day, may not be right for your dog. We have adjusted our miles to what we think will be good for our dog. Of course that could definitely change based on how he does. But we have allowed for time to see how his does. We have planned this trip according to his needs.
• Your dog shouldn’t carry more than 10-15% of their body weight in their pack. For Sammy that means he can only carry about 5-5.5lbs (including his pack).
• Food is huge…of course! From what we found, we bought the Bully Max 30/20 High Performance Dog Food. It has 535 calories per cup. Regular dog food has about 300 calories per cup. Bully Max is a high protein dog food that is used for muscle building. This will be a nice food to bring for him to make sure he is getting all the nutrition he needs. We also plan on bringing or buying some dog treats from him along the way.
• His gear is extremely important since he doesn’t have a say in what we put on him. So we have to be diligent to make sure what we are providing him be the best for his body. His feet are a main priority, of course! We will be bringing two different types of booties for him. One is a set of the Ruff Wear Bark’N Boot Liners since Sammy has a dew claw. Then we will buy the Grip Trex which is an all-terrain bootie. We have used these a ton with our Labrador (who isn’t able to join us on this trip due to her age) and they have worked super well. We are also brining a set of 1000 Denier Cordura booties. These work very well in the snow and are cheap enough that if you lose one it’s not a huge deal. The Ruff Wear sets are much more expensive so we save those for when we can find them if one falls off. We have it pretty dialed in now for him though that the booties haven’t fallen off in a long time. In addition he has a down jacket because he doesn’t have much fur. We are debating about buying him a rain jacket because the down won’t be the best if it’s super wet. We are also debating about using his wool jacket and rigging a rain jacket on it. We may get a little crafty there. We are still working on a solution for him. The pack we are using on him is a tad heavy but it is a super good pack that shouldn’t cause any rub spots on him since it is structured really nicely. We are still finalizing Sammy’s gear set up so we may end up buying a lighter weight one. Ideally we would like him to carry his own food, water bowl and booties. So we have to put it all together to weigh it and see how much we will have to carry of his gear. Check out Our Gear page for links to what we recommend!
• Sammy has already received his first snake venom booster shot. This will help him survive if he is bite by a snake. He has his follow up shot next month. He already has the rest of the vaccinations he needs since we kennel him every now and then. The only thing we need to get yet is a collar with our contact information on it and his rabies vaccine information. He is chipped and is registered with a tracking company so if he did get lost and someone found him, hopefully we would be reconnected. We already give him a monthly heartworm pill and he will have Frontline applied once a month for tick/flea prevention.
• Keeping Sammy on a leash on our thru hike is very important. We are starting in April which is a busy time on the trail. We want to not only be respectful of the other people on the trail but it keeps Sammy safe as well from other dogs, wildlife, eating things he shouldn’t be (you know what I mean, yuck), or drinking out of a standing water source that could make him sick . Having our dog on a leash is very important when at the shelter and other people are around. No one wants dirty dog prints on their gear or their food stolen. We do have a shock collar for him when we are in areas that no one is around. He hikes like a champ and stays right by us but it is good to have a shock collar in case he sees something and he runs after it. We bought the Dog Care Training Collar that is awesome. The battery life on the collar lasts about two weeks and the charger a month! It also has three settings, beep, vibrate and shock, which is super nice because now he responds to the beep! It is also super lightweight compared to what he was trained with. And you charge it with a USB port; so easy!
• When we spoke with his vet about any additional vitamins or supplements we need to give him, he said that if we are feeding him enough nutrition with a good, quality, high protein dog food, he has all of his shots, tick prevention and keeping an eye on his feet, Sammy will be good to go and will have the time of his life!
• There are three sections of the Appalachian Trail where dogs are not allowed:
  • Smokey Mountains (100 mile wilderness) - we will be receiving trail magic for Sammy. A gal will be taking care of him for the week while we hike through this section. Otherwise we would have had to kennel him. We are happy he will be able to stay with a family and get some rest and relaxation.
  • Baxter State Park – there are a couple places to kennel a dog. We just called around for pricing and looked at Google reviews to decide on which place to have him stay at for a couple days.
  • Bear Mountain State Park Trailside Wildlife Center. There is an alternative road to take to get past Bear Mountain so that is a super easy alternative to get around that area.

We will write a follow up post once we are done with our thru hike on how it went, what we would change, and what worked really well!
​
Blog post written by Amy Karras
Unnamed Adventures