One of the things that has been on the longer list of my things to do with the trike is going out more regularly with Rosie, our Australian Shepard.
This is not a new idea, of course. People have been riding with their dogs in one way or another probably since the modern safety bicycle was invented. Heck, maybe even before then...
Back in the old days, of course, people had a more laissez-faire attitude towards their companion animals. If the dog would run alongside you that was great, and if it wouldn't - if it took off or ran after others or disappeared you’d assume that it would find its way home. If it didn’t, well, it wasn’t a very good dog, then, was it?
Nowadays, as a general rule we keep our canine companions a little closer and, ideally, safer, but this does mean it can be a bit of a project. For smaller dogs you have to figure out a way to contain and carry them on your machine - there’s a delightful group on Facebook called Dogs on Trikes that provides a plethora of examples of this. For larger and more active dogs it means finding a way to attach the dog to the trike that is both safe for the dog and safe for the machine.
It’s not my first rodeo on this front. When I was younger (circa late 90’s and early oughts) we had a couple of very active dogs - one a border collie mix named Dax, the other an industrial-sized Australian Cattle Dog named Sisko. Dax was mine, while Sisko was MLW’s companion.
Each dog has its own attitude and comfort level with cycling machines. With this in mind, when I first introduced Dax to the bike (and it was an upright back then) I was very cautious. I walked him over to sit near the bike, and I petted him. Then I moved the bike back and forth a bit by him, and I petted him. I rolled it by and leaned it in towards him and...
...and he gave me a look that I swear said "Dude! What I see here is: I can run as fast as I want, for as long as I want. Is that right? Then let’s stop messing around and get going!"
(If you’ve lived with a herding dog you have probably seen a look like this before.)
So I hooked him up and we went. It was magic - he took to it like he’d been born to do exactly that. He was so eager, in fact, that I’d have to watch carefully to catch his energy flagging, and periodically make sure he wasn’t overheating, because he wouldn’t slow down unless I did. We rode together for years.
Rosie is an Australian Shepard mix, with a similar personality type and energy level, though thankfully a little more subdued than Dax was (he was well matched to a young man in his late 20’s and early 30’s, but I’m slightly more seasoned now). She’s always eager to come along in the car (and often seems to think she should be there, even if it’s not convenient to the moment).
When I say get out "more regularly", what I mean to say is that we’ve done it exactly once before. A little while after I got the Catrike Pocket I took her out along one of the wind turbine access roads as sort of a test-run. I wanted her away from traffic, and I wanted to be sure that she’d be able to keep herself out of the front wheels.
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That might actually be mental overkill, and I don’t think I’d ever even considered it as an issue with Dax. But the fact that she’d be running right beside the front wheel of the trike concerned me a bit with respect to the idea that she might step into that wheel. That would be a bad day for both of us (but mostly for Rosie).
I chose to go back to the same wind turbine access road, again to stay out of traffic. I had given consideration to going into town and riding around the lake, which wouldn't have been entirely traffic free, but would have been paved. Still, the access road is closer, and this was an experiment of sorts, so why not?
This is why not:
It hasn’t rained or snowed recently, but we did still have some snow on the ground, and it was a nearly 60° day, so it was... soft.
I realized this when I got there, and looked at it all for a long while as Rosie waited in the hatch (did I mention she likes to be in the car?). But ultimately I figured I was already there, so we might as well make a go of it. After all, this was really more of an experiment of sorts - just to get out and do a practice run to make sure she would handle it ok.
I needn’t have worried.
We went slow - in part by design, to get her used to it, and in part because soft is slow - and went a little less than a mile - the distance of the access road there and back. Aside from a couple of attempts to go the wrong way - e.g. backwards - she did just great! Her response wasn’t quite as eager as Dax’s back in the day (I suspect that’s a once in a lifetime sort of thing), but she really did seem to enjoy it, and did well with it. A good time was had by all.
...And then I went home and cleaned the mud off the trike and out of the car.