The rules a record is made under, so a reader can hold the journal to them

Choosing ground

A route goes in the diary when it survives August. That is the first filter and it removes most candidates: plenty of ground here is delightful in March and unusable for four months of the year, and a journal that pretends otherwise is a journal for tourists.

The second filter is that it is open to anybody on foot without a ticket, a booking or a telephone call.

Walking it

Once, in full, on one day, at the pace of an animal who stops to read things.

1. 1. Distance is paced on the route itself rather than traced on a map, written to a tenth of a mile, and an out and back keeps both legs in the figure.
2. 2. Time is the real elapsed time including stops, not a walking pace calculation.
3. 3. Air temperature is taken at the start from a thermometer, not a forecast.
4. 4. Surface temperature is checked by hand on any hard surface. The back of a hand held down for five seconds is a crude instrument and a truthful one.
5. 5. Shade is recorded as a rough fraction of the route with the hour attached.
6. 6. Water is recorded only where an animal can reach it and use it.
7. 7. Signage is transcribed rather than summarised.

Heat, which is the whole local problem

From May to the end of September the constraint here is not distance, it is the surface and the hour. A record walked in that window says so at the foot of the page and gives the hours it was walked in.

Nothing in this journal is a judgement about whether a particular animal should be out in particular weather. Records give conditions. What those conditions mean for your dog is a question for the person who treats your dog.

That sentence is the boundary this publication keeps, and it is why no record contains a single word of medical or veterinary opinion.

Fixes

A correction goes into the record itself and carries the day it was made. The sentence it replaced stays readable beside it, so nobody has to take our word for what changed. Silent editing does not happen here.

The way to get one made is a note to shade@travelpetadventures.com naming the record and the sentence. Those go to the front of the pile.

What is never done here

1. 1. Accept money for a record, for a mention inside one, for a link or for a picture.
2. 2. Publish ground that has not been walked end to end.
3. 3. Take anything at all, free or otherwise, in return for appearing here.
4. 4. Award a place a number, a position in a list or a star.
5. 5. Ship a counter, an advertising script or a tracker. None exists on this site.
6. 6. Use another person's photographs, or their words without quotation marks and a name.
7. 7. Offer to move an animal, help arrange it, or say a word about one's health. Three separate lines, and none of them is crossed.
8. 8. Let the look up touch the writing. No record mentions it and no record depends on it.