>>1670287>How do you keep your dog warm in the winter, what's your dogs sleep setup? How do you deal with stopping for lunch in the cold?Does nobody really have an answer for this? I try to give good information on this board when I have experience, anyways here's some of what I've learned if you want to take your dog out in the winter.
Stopping is hard, If I stop for more than 20 minutes he is obviously cold. To fix this I just don't stop during the day except for 5 min at a time. The worst is the time between stopping to make camp and whenever the tent is up and fire is going because it takes so long and is getting dark. What happens is he digs a little hole sheltered near a tree and curls himself up in it and shivers. He refuses to lay on a foam pad at this point in time. I really have no way to help keep him warm except for throwing a windbreaker over him at this point. Making camp is also hard for him because it means travelling off trail through deep loose snow.
Boots aren't really necessary on packed trails, but his paws get pretty cut up from ice and freezing rain.
The amount of food you need to carry increases substantially. ~2cups per day at home, 3 on the trail in summer, and 4 in the winter.
Two layers of foam pad on snow was fine for ground insulation (worked better than one layer on rock at -5C) The big problem was getting him to stay on a folded in half foam pad. I really want to know how you keep your dog insulated from the snow in winter at night, how you keep him on the pad.
Those mini sleeping bags work well, better than a fleece sleeping bag liner I think because it prevents convection even though it doesn't have as much insulation.
My dog has no problem tucking himself into his bags to keep warm, but pushes them around and ends up on the snow. Does anyone have experience with the ruffwear style bags where the pad is attached to the bag? Thinking of diying my own (even though I have had very good experiences with their packs)
