Dog Scouts of America offers several titles, including Pack and Trail Dog titles.  Kiyo, Toka’s older pack mate, was the first dog to earn the 1000 mile trail dog title.  She was also the first dog to earn the 1000 mile pack dog title.  To date, she’s the only dog to earn both.

These DSA titles are fun to earn.  The great thing about them is that you can do them at your convenience.  Have a spare hour?  Hike a mile or two.  Kiyo & I built up to the 10 mile hikes required for both titles, of course, taking several months to condition her, especially for the pack dog title.

Here’s a link to the  Dog Scouts info on trail dog titles and what’s required to earn them.

Toka has started his journey towards these titles, literally & figuratively.  We took our first official ‘hike’ a couple of days ago.  It took us over an hour to stroll 1.48 miles.  We had lots of stops to rest, sniff, and enjoy cookies.  And play in the water.

I’ve added the GPS info about the hike I downloaded from my Garmin watch.  As my friend Amy said ‘only 998.52 [miles] more to go!’  And that’s just for the trail dog title.