A ten mile run.....Or was it 12?

This morning, braving 26 degree temperatures (yes, that's F), I went for a 10 mile run. 

Tess of course came along.  She's the best little trail dog you can imagine.  I imagine her limit in cold weather is somewhere in the 20-25 mile range - this 10 miles didn't phase her in the LEAST. 

Or rather......her 12 mile run that she did concurrently with my ten mile run. 

Both when I'm running and riding, Tess's style is to do giant circles or figure 8's (FAST, at top speed) if we are on a wide jeep road.  It's a lot of fun to watch her BOUND and JUMP through the brush and rough terrain on either side of the road.  

My run today was almost soley dirt wide roads, so out of curiousity I stuck my phone on GPS mode inside her backpack.  (inside a ziplock in case she dunked in the river without me noticing). 

Turns out for every 5 miles I do, she does an entire extra MILE.  The program I use doesn't take GPS readings very frequently, so as I look at the track, it didn't "get" all the crazy geometric shapes she does, so it is likely even more. 

Here's some pics from our walk on Friday - the day before we got a rare snow in the CA central valley. No pics today - too busy trying to make forward movement this morning and I'm not sure I had motor function in frozen fingers for taking pics....

 Too much to see - she would pose for the camera but not actually look at me.

 A gloomy yet still beatiful afternoon.

 This is how she moves across trail - bounding with full extension and coil.  It's the funniest thing.

 Tess's preferred speed down the trail is TOP speed which leaves plenty of time to stop and sniff at interesting things before I catch up.  When I pass her she takes off again to the next interesting thing.

Here she is waiting for me to catch up. If there's nothing interesting to sniff to pass the time, she'll stop and just look at something until I get there.  Her check in is automatic now and she decides whether she races back to me to check in, or whether she just wants to stop and wait for me.

It's incredibly motivating to have a dog that loves the trail as much as you do, and can do speed and distance that matches or exceeds what's usually the plan for either a run or a trail ride.

After some careful thought, I have decided I have some tongue in cheek advice for those New Year's Resolutions: 

Want to eat more vegetables? get a bird.

Want to exercise more? get a dog. 

Seriously. 

And.....since updates on Tess can be far and few between, another example of how #lifewithsmartdog regularly goes down in my life.

- I leave Tess in my car at the vetmed barn while doing a large animal palpation lab.  We had gone on a long walk and I let her swim in the creek. 
- I come back to this:
 
- It's hard to see by the glare in this pic off the window, but you should note how "high" she is off my backseat. She has taken my car blanket from the front seat, pulled it into the back seat, stuffed it in a milk crate that contains some laundry, and created a nest for herself.
- Clever, but dog nests are NOT what I have in mind for my favorite car blanket. So evict her and throw the blanket out of the milk crate.
- The next morning during my commute Tess is doing SOMETHING in the back seat.  I finally turn around to find this:



- Not quite as effective as the first time, but apparently she deemed it "good enough" and used my backpack to support her bottom half. 

Silly dog.