Something shifts when the weather turns.
Not in you. In them. Your dog has been doing the same 20-minute loop for months - out the door, left at the corner, around the block, back home. Fine. Adequate. Functional.
Then one day it's 16 degrees and sunny and suddenly that same walk is an expedition. Every bush needs investigating. Every person needs greeting. That spot on the sidewalk where a pigeon sat three hours ago? Absolutely critical intelligence that requires at least 90 seconds of focused sniffing.
What was a 20-minute walk is now 45 minutes and you haven't even passed the second street.
I used to get frustrated by this. I had Things To Do. I had a schedule. I had the phone-in-pocket, AirPods-in, let's-get-this-over-with energy that makes you a very efficient but very boring person.
I don't know when exactly I stopped fighting it. Probably around the same time I stopped pretending that the Things To Do were actually that urgent. Because here's what I noticed: on the days I let the walk expand - when I let Sami set the pace and the route - I come back in a better mood. Not because of exercise or fresh air or any of the reasons you'd read in a wellness article. Because for 45 minutes, I wasn't in charge. I didn't have to decide anything. The dog decided. I just followed.
There's a relief in that.
Spring is a good time to let the leash go a little slack. Not literally - your dog will find the one mud puddle in a 3-kilometer radius and you both know it. But figuratively. Let the walk be longer than it needs to be. Let your dog sniff the thing. You're not late for anything that can't wait.
Bobby
P.S. If spring has you thinking about travel with your dog - and it probably should - there's a free tool I built that checks which airlines let dogs fly in cabin: canmydogfly.com