Motivation for this blog


I have a love for pets, nature, hiking, and photography. With extra time on my hands after retiring from IBM, I decided to connect my passions. I was familiar with the parks in my neighbourhood but wanted more variety, so I began exploring a new park every couple of days.




I was already a member of The Bruce Trail Club, Toronto Outdoors Club, and several meetup hiking groups, so I was not a stranger to many of the best trails in the city. Most of the hikes I was going on with these groups were good, but not great for a dog lover. First of all, many of the hike leaders do not allow dogs on their hikes. Some hikes take place on trails where dogs are not allowed. Quite a few of the hikes are more than an hour's drive to the trailhead and at 12km or more, take up the entire day.

I began by exploring trails near home, gradually increasing the distance, and training my Lucy on a variety of important skills including socializing, recall, heel, leave it, and the usual. As we met more people with dogs, I’d ask about the places they like to go to. In 6 months of exploring, we tracked 119 hikes for a total of 615 km.

Susan Visser smvisser@gmail.com

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