The Rutland Trail At Finnegan Road - Part 1

Our on-again-off-again springtime was, once again, on. We had a lovely day so I took the dogs back to the Rutland Nature Trail, the site of an old railroad line, for a brief hike. This time, however, we began at Finnegan Road to explore a section we hadn't seen before:

This was a straight, level path which ran through lovely wetlands. The dogs ran and played:

All five dogs were off the leash and full of energy. I was happy to see them having fun, but insisted that they not get too far ahead of me:

We walked through short patches of woods, but always there were open wetlands ahead and behind us. You can see the next wetland coming up in this photo:

Jack, the newest dog (the gold colored one), was just learning to walk off leash. He'd had some difficulty on previous hikes, but this time out, he behaved better than any of the other dogs:

Wildlife had left fascinating smells all along the trail for the dogs to sniff:

I momentarily thought this was a beaver lodge but changed my mind when I noticed it was built of reeds and cattails instead of branches. I decided that it was a muskrat lodge:

The happy dogs ran ahead and then, when I called, ran back to me. They seemed to consider it all great fun:

Big Seamus loves this sort of trail. It's easy for him to lumber along, with few obstacles to climb over. Come to think of it, I like this sort of trail for the same reason:

Our happy little group continued on:

Seamus climbed down the bank for a cool drink:

We could see the bridge just ahead and I knew we'd be there soon. But I'll post about that in Part 2, tomorrow: