The perfect dog walking holiday

The Alps are my daily inspiration. When I walk the dog every morning, I see these mountains – they’re right on our doorstep. I usually turn around after half an hour. But what if I carried on walking all the way to the Alps?

I’ve been dreaming about taking a multi-day hike with my dog for a long time. And now I’m going for it. My goal is to trek from Schäftlarn, where I live, to Innsbruck, a good 130 kilometres away. In one week. My dog, Oskar, is a very fit, three-year-old black Labrador. I reckon he’ll manage the distance and the 3,000 metres of height gain.

At the beginning, Oskar can’t go fast enough. He’s tugging at the elastic leash that I tied around my hips to keep my hands free. The first two days are great for breaking us in and the gravel crunches reassuringly under my boots. While Oskar’s a natural (and doesn’t have to carry a backpack), I need to slowly get used to things and find a good pace.

The leg from Beuerberg to Benediktbeuern is a superbly panoramic tour through the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. We hike through the hilly landscape and gaze at cow pastures and church steeples. It’s humid and oppressive and Oskar keeps jumping into springs at the side of the trail. In this section, the route no longer leads directly along the Isar or Loisach rivers, but through forests and across fields, which smell of freshly mown grass and cows.

Two days later, we arrive in Benediktbeuern at the foot of the mountains. From here onwards, it’s pretty much uphill. I feed Oskar and then set off for something to eat too. When I come back to the room, the dog’s snoring peacefully. Outside, the wind’s howling.

The following morning, it’s cool and damp, mist covers the pastures. The hiking trail leads up towards a forest-covered peak called Rabenkopf at an elevation of 1,555 metres in the foothills of the Alps. Oskar works like a Trojan, trudging ahead and pulling me uphill.

Towards the evening, we reach Scharnitz on the border. Since 2018, traffic has bypassed the village through a tunnel, which has made it even quieter than before. “You could say it’s dead,” says Helga Schallhart, the landlady of Pension Helga, where Oskar and I are staying. Since the bypass was completed, even more shops and guesthouses have closed. The kindly landlady suggests making a vegetable soup for me – an offer I can’t refuse. With a full stomach, I fall into bed with a picture of a majestic stag on the wall behind me under which a snoring Labrador is lying.

The last two legs of my hike are the most tricky. We negotiate steep paths through the Karwendel mountains. After Scharnitz, a narrow path turns into the Gleirsch gorge. Steep rock faces rise up on the right and left, with the white water rushing past below. Fallen tree trunks are stuck like toothpicks in the open mouth of the gorge. Oskar senses trouble, growls, and tugs at the leash. He can smell something that I don’t see until much later…

A chamois is standing in the middle of a steep face on the other side of the gorge, not 20 metres away as the crow flies. It’s making a whistling noise to warn us off. I’m worried that the dog might jump into the gorge out of sheer fright, so I click the carabiner on his leash into a wire rope attached next to the path.

I give him a lot of treats to distract and guide him out of the danger zone. Shortly afterwards, we encounter a herd of nosey young cows. I can only stop them from taking a nibble from the dog by shouting loudly at them and brandishing my stick. Later on, we pass a colony of ibex with their young. Oskar is in awe of these big creatures with horns. And they keep a watchful eye on him.

Hiking the long trail with a dog in the Alps isn’t a piece of cake. Which is why familiarising yourself with the rules beforehand is a must. In addition to the distraction of deer and animals grazing near the trail, the weather is another hazard on our most challenging leg of the trail.

I’ve seldom experienced such a feeling of balance and inner peace, as here on the silent days of hiking through these high, desolate mountains.

And I seem to have burnt off the extra calories I acquired through working more at home too.

I’m pretty exhausted after descending 1,500 metres from the Pfeishütte to Inntal. A friend of my son’s who’s studying in Innsbruck picks Oskar and me up by car. The return journey to Munich is incredibly fast. Just an hour and a half later I’m back in front of my garden gate, where I started out a week ago.

Oskar trots joyfully into the house, as if he’s coming back from a little walk. I enter a little less joyfully as I’m tired out and my back’s aching. An all-inclusive holiday where you pamper yourself is less tiring than a long-distance hike. But hiking through the mountains for a week is unbeatable.