Ranking Chattanooga's Mountains

The Tennessee River Gorge

I love mountains. Living in Chattanooga, mountains surround me. From downtown, I am within a twenty-minute radius of no less than five mountains teeming with creeks, capped by cliffs, and sprawling with trails. They are what makes Chattanooga Outside Magazine's "Best Town Ever" twice and one of their 24 Best Mountain Towns in the U.S. for 2022. But not all mountains are created equal. That's why I have created a definitive, objective, and exhaustive ranking of Chattanooga's mountains.

About Our Mountains

 Some snobbishly inclined folks from America's "greater" mountain ranges thumb their noses at the Appalachians, especially the southern Appalachians. When I say I'm from Tennessee, these people turn into Crocodile Dundees of elevation. "That's not a mountain. That's a mountain." 

*shows you a google image search of Longs or Shasta* 

*flails on a southern V3 boulder problem or 5.8 trad line* 

Yes, our mountains are small. The Rockies would be too if they were 400 million years older and succumbed to the geologic pressure of erosion. 

In the ridge-and-valley province of the Appalachian region, mountains are long rather than tall. Lookout Mountain peaks at a mere 2,392 ft but runs 88 miles south starting from Chattanooga. Because of this, "peaks" and rises above the mountains' plateaus often receive local, colloquial names. For example, Raccoon Mountain is also Elder Mountain; I will use "Raccoon" because trash pandas are cooler than old people. This is also the case with Signal Mountain and Suck Creek Mountain. Both are part of the Cumberland Escarpment, known as Walden Ridge, that runs 74 miles through Tennessee. It all gets confusing. For my purposes, I will use Suck Creek Mountain to refer to areas west of and including Suck Creek Canyon and Signal Mountain for everything else.

A: Lookout Mountain

B: Mowbray Mountain

C: Raccoon Mountain

D: Signal Mountain

E: Suck Creek Mountain

About My Methodology

I rank the mountains according to arbitrary categories: swimming holes, mountain biking, rock climbing, etc. If you don't like my categories or think them insufficient, make your own mountain rankings. 

Points are awarded based on the quality of the category for each mountain. The point system goes as follows:

No (0 points): nope, nada, zero. This mountain does not offer anything in this category. Or it does but it's on private property which means it does not. I award this mountain no points and may God have mercy on your soul. 

Not really (1 point): Practically speaking, no. Sure, you could cool off in the pools above and below Glen Falls but you can't swim in them. 

Yes (2 points): This mountain has swimming holes or rock climbing or trail running and is worth your time but other mountains have better.  

Amazing (3 points): This mountain offers amazing recreation opportunities. Its [insert category] is unrivaled regionally and maybe even nationally (just look at the license plates in rock climbers' parking lots in winter around here). 

 

Admitting My Presuppositions

I've stood on summits from Maine to Washington, New Mexico to Canada. Little ol' Lookout is still my favorite mountain in the whole world. I've climbed hundreds of pitches (Mountain Project), logged  thousands of miles (Strava), and made a lifetime of memories (my brain) on this ancient prominence. I'll try to keep that love of place in check throughout my analysis.

Ranking Chattanooga's Mountains

Mowbray Mountain takes the swimming hole KOM with ease. From the ever-popular and ever-crowded Blue Hole to the not-so-secret-but-hard-to-get-to spots up in Big Soddy Gorge or Deep Creek: cold and clear wollerin' holes abound. Suck Creek And Signal Mountain have great roadside holes for a summer escape. Lookout gets a "Not Really" score because a truly majestic, God-tier, swimming spot exists but is inaccessible behind the private property lines of the Lula Lake Land Trust. Raccoon comes in last, though you could jump into the green, tepid waters of one of America's most polluted rivers if you wanted to. 

Rebecca about to take the plunge somewhere on Mowbray Mountain

Lookout Mountain's Guild-Hardy and Truck Trail systems are excellent after-work ramble or pieces of a bigger adventure ride. Expect everything from pea gravel to baby head-sized chonk. The area's best gravel is on top of Suck Creek Mountain in the Prentice Cooper State Forest. The main road offers 25 miles of out-and-back gravel grinding and the numerous Jeep spur trails make for rowdy and fun adventure biking. 

Alea, Brooks, and some folks I don't remember on Game Reserve Road

This is Raccoon Mountain's time to shine. The High Voltage trail was featured on Patagonia's "Best of Home" and I think the Live Wire trail gives it a run for its money. If you like technical and chunky riding with blistering, singletrack descents, then this is the trail system for you. Not to be outdone, Lookout Mountain features fast and fun mountain biking across its plateau. Many of which can be strung together via the 14-mile long Cloudland Connector Trail. 

Notice that Signal gets an alternative ranking because Walden's Ridge Park will be completed soon and offers downhill trails that people will want to travel from all over to ride. So that's cool.  

Brooks playing on the Chunky Trail of Raccoon Mountain

Again, everyone gets points here. If there are trails, then there's trail running. Raccoon comes in last because if you run here you may get mowed down by an unsuspecting mountain biker. I know because I've almost mowed down a few myself. They're MTB trails for a reason. 

Lookout Mountain's battlefield national park offers a web of trails that link up in a myriad of ways but its 10-mile Big Daddy Loop is its pride and joy. Suck Creek boasts the Pot Point and Mullins Cove loops. Both measure about 13 miles and can be done together in a figure-8 for a trail marathon(ish) that will kick you in the pants. Finally, don't sleep on Mowbray Mountain where the Cumberland Trail traverses its plateau and descends and climbs back out of its steep cliff-lined gorges. 

Rebecca descending the Bluff Trail on Lookout Mountain

Chattanooga drops the ball in this category, at least in its greater-metropolitan statistical area. Segments of the Cumberland Trail cut through Mowbray, Signal, and Suck Creek Mountains and make for nice overnighters but the real good stuff is a few hours away in the Smokies. 

Reid backpacking the Cumberland Trail on Mowbray Mountain

Everybody gets points here. Even you, Raccoon. Chattanooga is the crown jewel of southern rock climbing and maybe even climbing east of the Mississippi. My favorite single-pitch trad crag in the world is Sunset Park atop Lookout Mountain. Mowbray boasts overhanging sport climbing and world-class bouldering (LRC, yes but don't miss the horizontal roof-pulling down the road on the Cumberland Trail). Lastly, Tennessee Wall attracts trad climbers from all over the country to its orange and tan sandstone walls during the year's coldest months. Because "T-Wall" is southern facing, you can climb in a t-shirt in January. 

myself bouldering at the base of Signal Mountain

The Final Analysis: Chattanooga's Mountains Ranked

Suck Creek Mountain: 14

Lookout Mountain: 13

Mowbray Mountain: 11

Signal Mountain: 10 (though soon to be 12, probably)

Raccoon Mountain: 7

Chattanooga's best mountain is Suck Creek Mountain. You can climb the formidable cliffs of the Tennessee Wall; dunk in the numerous swimming holes along Suck Creek Road; run the Pot Point loop; backpack the Cumberland Trail; bike Game Reserve Road to Insurance Bluff; or car camp at Davis Pond. All of these reasons make it Chattanooga's best mountain -- even better than Lookout. 

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The Buddha and the Pain Cave

Running hurts. Anyone who tells you otherwise probably says wheatgrass juice tastes good too. (It does not.) Some want to pretend that running is always social media-worthy, but running will almost always bring you to a point where you look like death and everything sucks. That, to me, is part of what makes it so beautiful. 

My favorite running photo is of the finish line of a hundred-mile trail race. A middle-aged man weeps as he struggles to make it across the finish line before the cut-off time. He's fighting, with everything he has, for dead last place. And everyone around him is going berserker to cheer him on. It's heartbreaking and beautiful and I wish I could find the link to it. I like running because it pushes the body and brain beyond the threshold of discomfort. It requires the runner to dwell in the pain cave.

The "pain cave" is a term used by endurance athletes to describe the deep, dark place where physical, mental, and emotional fatigue coalesce. It sounds bleak and yet you'll find about 3,830,000 google results for "embracing the pain cave." Many feature ultra-runner Courtney Dauwalter, who is largely responsible for popularizing the term. If you don't know who Courtney Dauwalter is, her ultra-running rap sheet is impressive. My favorite tidbit is her performance at the 2017 Moab 240 (that's 240 miles). Dauwalter finished in first place, kind of a big deal. She also finished 10 hours ahead of second place, which is a remarkably huge deal. Close your computer and ponder the world's greatest athlete you've never heard about. Courtney Dauwalter knows a thing or two about pain and how to deal with it.

Pain is the language our body uses to tell our brain that it does not like what is happening. I love this line from Haruki Murakami's, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." It's a Buddhist saying. The implication is that the body feels pain but the brain chooses what to do with it. You could give up. You could quit. Or you could delve deeper into the pain cave. Descend into the recesses of your mind and find the inner mental strength to carry on.

Watch any Courtney Dauwalter interview on youtube and she's grinning ear to ear as she talks about the pain cave. It could be her bubbly personality. Or it could be a peculiar love for this dark and agonizing mental space. For Dauwalter, the cave is the place to grow as a runner and a human being. 

Some runners transcend the pain altogether and achieve a "runner's high." I am not one of them. When I enter the pain cave, I bring an imaginary tent and sleeping bag because I'm going to be hurting for a while. I don't always tap into my inner-Dauwalter. Sometimes I have a pity party and cut my run short. I am not a world-class endurance athlete. I hesitate to call myself an athlete at all. But I do know that if I dig deep enough, enough times, my brain actually can dominate the body. And I've got pretty good at settling into the pain and suffering my way through things. Even when I hate it, I love it. And I almost always want to do it again.

I teach comparative world religions to eleventh graders in high school. I love my job. My favorite unit to teach, but the hardest for my students to grasp, is Buddhism. The First Noble Truth uttered by the Buddha is that life is suffering (dukkha). It is always interesting how my students respond to this assertion of the world. For many, it seems bleak or pessimistic. Still, others nod their heads in affirmation. Divorce, sickness, loneliness, death, poverty, bullying. Many students are acutely aware of the reality of pain. 

Last fall, in the middle of my Buddhism unit, our school experienced an awful object lesson in the truth of suffering. "If we are afraid to touch our suffering," Thich Nhat Hanh explains, "we will not be able to realize the path of peace, joy, and liberation. Don’t run away," he continues, "Touch your suffering.” This is the meaning of the First Noble Truth. And so that's what we did.

We didn't run away. 

We touched our suffering. 

We entered the pain cave. Sat with it. Kept company with the pain and suffering. Only then, the Buddha says, one can be on the path of release. But that's hard work. We'd much rather stuff it down, compartmentalize it, or run away. We put smiles on our faces and say we're good when everything seems like it's falling apart. This emotional bypassing is a pathological condition among Western folks, especially Western Christians. I mean, consider the great American folk song but the God-awful theology of the hymn, "I'll Fly Away:" 

Some glad morning when this life is over, I'll fly away!  Just a few more weary days and then, I'll fly away! Yeah, when I die, Hallelujah, by and by, I'll fly away!

This is either the ramblings of a psychopath with a death wish or a neo-platonic perversion of the gospel. Either way it's dirty brown water trash. Instead, the Buddha instructs us not to escape from life "but to help us relate to ourselves and to the world as thoroughly as possible" (Hanh). Yearning for a better life after death is passive. The Buddha encourages us to be active. Lean into the suffering and work towards its cessation here and now (Cūḷamālukya Sutta). "To be truly happy," insists Arya Namdol, "one must be intimately connected to and bear witness to suffering" (Namdol). That's a valuable lesson, even for non-Buddhists and, especially, for Western Christians.

Life, like running, involves tremendous suffering. But that is not the whole of it. The Buddha indeed taught the truth of suffering, but he also taught the truth of "dwelling happily in things as they are" (Samyutta Nikaya). And that, to me, is the meaning of the saying, "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." And that, to me, is the work of the pain cave.

So the next time you are edging toward the dark gaping mouth of the pain cave, physical or existential, set out for yourself a metaphorical meditation cushion. Maybe one day you'll reach enlightenment or whatever.

Further Readings (and Listenings):
Courtney Dauwalter on Embracing the Pain Cave (ep. 234 of Running On Om podcast) 
Courtney Dauwalter: How to Embrace Pain in Our Lives (Rich Roll podcast) 
The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh

Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor 

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5 Honest Strava Achievements

I love Strava. It's a fitness app that's equal parts training log and social media platform. Users can track their performance on routes and compare their efforts to other users on segments. Like Instagram and Twitter, users can give "kudos," leave comments, and be "rewarded" for their achievements. These rewards are great motivators, I just wish they'd be a bit more honest about them. Below are what I imagine would be honest Strava achievements.

1. Kudos

And mommy's baby is ready for his yum-yums. 

2. Top 10 Finish

I recently scored a Top Ten trophy on a local loop, which is really an embarrassment for the entire Chattanooga trail running community. I shouldn't have a top ten finish in anything. My high school basketball coach told me I ran like a 40-year-old man was fifteen. By that math, today I run like I'm 88.  

3. Local Legend

The Local Legend is a recent(ish) addition to Strava that rewards athletes who log the most attempts on a segment over a rolling 90-day period. TBH, I love it. It is the achievement I covet the most. To be a Local Legend, you don't have to be fast, you just have to be persistent. Or, you just have to be the only person on Strava ripping through that obscure back alley segment. 

4. KOM

Coming in hot with a side of bacon! We all have seen that guy (always a guy) blasting down the trail heat-seeking the much-sought-after "King of the Mountain" crown. Often, these bozos are so trophy hungry they forget they're not the only ones on the trail. 

5. No Bathroom Breaks

The data scientists and app developers at Strava Inc. need to make this achievement a thing. The only thing worse than a sloppy poo-poo sliding out your sweaty buttcheeks on a muggy summer day is an unplanned sloppy poo-poo sliding out your sweaty buttcheeks surrounded by poison ivy and mosquitos midway through your long run. Its avoidance should be celebrated. 

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A Love Letter to My Little Legs

I'm short. Five-foot-six to be exact. I towered over my grandmother but I definitely have her to thank for these genes. I have short, stubby, muscular legs with T-Rex thighs and bowling pin calves. 

When I was a kid I was proud of my shortness. I got in a legitimate argument with my best friend over who was more deserving of playing Zacchaeus (a famously short Bible character) in the third-grade play. My hero was Muggsy Bogues and I would pray to God every night that I would take his place as the shortest player in NBA history. (Mr. Bogues was 5-foot-3.) Today, I have only three inches over the Charlotte Hornets point guard and not one iota of his basketball talent. 

Despite basketball's generosity to the vertically gifted, I played on the high school team. However, my membership on that team -- both athletically and socially -- was a bit of a joke. I wore Ramones t-shirts under my practice jersey if that tells you anything. In fact, the older I got, the more I learned to own my shortness through humor. In a college speech course, I recited the lyrics of Skee-Lo's "I Wish I Was a Little Bit Taller" before an audience of 30-40 people. They loved it. And before chubbies and showing thighs were a cool-guy thing, I was wearing short shorts to be funny.

It wasn't until I started rock climbing that I mastered the art of self-deprecating humor. Climbing like cycling or running places participants under significant pressure to achieve an "ideal" physique. Body image issues are a pervasive societal problem so it's no surprise that endurance sports, which serves as a microcosm of the society at large, has their own body image issues. And studies show that the demand for the ideal body does not discriminate based on gender either. 

Enter any climbing gym in America and you're bound to see and hear traditionally beautiful people with no shirts on talk about diets, nutrition, and weight loss. Those aren't inherently bad things but it underscores how obsessed climbers are with appearance (often cloaked in the language of performance). So there I was, in the gym or at the crag, definitely keeping my shirt on, blaming my "Cee-Lo Green arms," my "Oompa-Loompa legs" or my "prepubescent wookie" body for my failures to send. People particularly loved the "prepubescent wookie" bit. It's legitimately funny. But not to my therapist who, years later, would call me out on this defense mechanism during our first or second session. 

To be clear: I am not trying to say my struggle to be comfortable in my own body was the same as the next person's. And I wasn't going to therapy because of it. It just naturally came up during the session because I was so habituated in the ways of making fun of myself. And not knowing or loving oneself can lead to a myriad of unwanted behaviors. What I am trying to say is that a lot of us -- a lot more of us than we realize -- struggle with being at home in our body more than we care to admit. Even or especially(?) if you participate in outdoor endurance adventure sports. 

While I was going to counseling I was also training for an ultra-marathon. I wasn't fast. I wasn't good. If I didn't have a "climber's body" (whatever that is) then I most definitely did not have a "runner's body" (whatever that is). (PSA: all bodies are climbers' and runners' bodies.) When I was fifteen, my basketball coach told me I ran like a 40-year old man. By that math, I was running 31 miles like an 80-year old man. But I did it. My short little legs ran 34 miles up, down, and around Lookout Mountain. At the time, my friend Josh and I were only the 8th Strava users to do the Big Daddy Loop Threepeat. 

Since the 50K wasn't a race or sanctioned event, I got no running bib, completion medal, or cool t-shirt. What I did get was a healthy sense of self. None of my therapist's "homework" assignments got me to think about my body and myself differently. Ultra-running did. Running helped me live in my body with confidence and compassion. After the 50K, though, my interest in running has been negligible. 

I reserve the right to be wrong about everything, but riding a bike is much more fun. While I worked on a draft of this post, I got to ride my bike with Catalyst Sports Adaptive Mountain Bike Tour. Some of these athletes could pedal a bicycle; others used hand-cycles or e-assisted bikes. All of them ripped around the trails with the kind of grin that I think few things other than a bicycle can provide. One rider talked about how the event made him feel human again. Another shared that adaptive cycling helped them learn to love themself after years of hating their body.

I have half a dozen takeaways from riding with these athletes and here's just one: human-powered outdoor adventure sports have a great capacity to heal. Outdoor adventure athletes, brands, and marketing have a great capacity to hurt, sure. But strip all that away -- grades, PRs, and K/QOMs too -- and you're left with something simply amazing, liberating even: the discovery of one's abilities through moving your body outdoors.

My short but capable legs have done a lot of rad things. I'm proud of them and what they've done and where they've been.

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The Art of Sucking It Up

*~SpRiNg BrEaK 2007~*

Have you ever woken up to a pack of raccoons tickling your feet? I have. I was 18 years old, camping on the eastern end of St. George Island with Russ. It was spring break and we were backpacking with our skimboards in tow. Two seniors in high school living on the beach for spring break? I had high expectations. I can't speak for Russ but I had envisioned the trip to be like hiking into the actualized lyrics of Katy Perry's "California Girls." But my eighteen-year-old brain vastly overestimated how many "daisy dukes, bikinis on top" would be hiking to a primitive backcountry campsite on the beach. The sum total was zero.

Instead, the trip went like this: Russ and I backpacked into a desolate campsite by the bay. It was cold. Sand filled every crevice of our bodies while sand gnats and mosquitos ravaged every exposed piece of our flesh. We wore makeshift burkas to shield our faces from the bugs. Even the skimboarding was bad. A couple of nights in, I forgot to hang our food and awoke under my tarp tent to a pack of raccoons tickling my feet, searching for treats. I got Russ up, packed our bags and hiked out. 

Some cherished memories happened that night, like hiking without headlamps by the starlight over the Gulf of Mexico (Russ told me years later, it was so beautiful he cried). But that doesn't change the fact that we gave up. We quit. When it got hard, we went home. That wasn’t the only time something like that happened either. In fact, Russ and I began making “a thing” out of hiking out in the middle of the night to find the nearest Waffle House. It was fun. But as I began to spend more time outside and the trips got longer and more remote, there weren’t any Waffle Houses to retreat to. Eventually, I had to learn the art of sucking it up.

You should read Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. There's this line: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” I think about that all the time when I'm out trail running or rock climbing because I have a choice in how I respond to pain and discomfort: give up or keep going.

Renowned psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl maintained that between stimulus and response, there is a space. And, “In that space is our power to choose our response.” Whether climbing mountains or running long distances, I think human-powered endurance activities help build the muscles used to make the responses required for suffering in the real world too.

Whether you’re running an ultramarathon and every muscle in your right foot is screaming...

Or you’re festering in a tent while bad weather batters your high camp... 

Or you’re working two jobs to pay off medical debt from a routine hernia surgery because Americans pay 40% more for healthcare than the rest of the industrialized world...

Each creates a space where the pain is inevitable but the suffering is optional. 

"Suffering," here, is the choice made to see it through. I don't mean this to romanticize or make light of anyone's actual physical, emotional, existential suffering. I think there's a difference between suffering and "things that suck." Yet it's all very subjective. And to be fair, navigating a pandemic, working an unsatisfying job, or arguing with a partner is not the same thing as trad climbing, ultra-running, or waking up to raccoons sniffing your feet. But the ability to take a deep breath, figure something out, and keep going when you're in the mountains might also help when you need to plan a budget, discuss your feelings, or finally find a therapist. 

Alpinist Kelly Cordes said of ultrarunners, "To keep going when given the option to quit is hardcore." If you're reading this then you made it through 2020 and you probably suffered something. We all learned a little about the art of sucking it up this year and I think we all got a little more hardcore. On a recent bikepacking adventure with Russ, I brought up that 2007 spring break trip. I talked about how thankful I was that playing outside taught us the same lesson running taught Haruki Murakami. Russ looked at me and spoke through the cloud of mosquitos and campfire smoke."It's funny you mention that," he said, "because I really wanted to call it quits today." We laughed and kept eating our ramen bombs and then we got back on our bicycles the next morning.

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The 5 Worst Kinds of People on the Trail

We love our local trail systems. In Chattanooga, we're lucky to have several nearby options for folks in various parts of town. But with relative ease of access (and ease of access is relative) comes certain frustrations too. People, mostly. And while we shouldn't expect solitude from our front country adventures, we should expect certain behaviors that allow for  mutual enjoyment. These are the five worst kinds of people at the local trail.

5. the directionally challenged

A lot of trails feature daily directions, i.e., CW on M, W, F and CCW on T, R and so on. No matter how clearly stated at trailheads and intersections these directions are, some people can't seem to get it straight. I don't want to be too harsh to the directionally challenged, many of them are elderly. But an honest mistake can quickly turn into an emergency room visit when Grandma Dorothy gets mowed down by the MTB guy trying to snipe the coveted King of the Mountain (KOM).

4. the KOM/QOM 

“In its need for special clothing,” Grant Peterson writes, “bicycle riding is less like scuba diving and more like a pickup basketball game.” That said, somebody convinced the KOM/QOM crowd that spandex is the only fabric for any outdoor activity. These folks show up to the trailhead decked out in full kit for a casual after-work ride around the park. I like going fast about as much as the next guy, but these easy-to-distinguish trail users seem to think that KOM stands for "Kill All Mountainbikers" (the 'A' makes a soft 'O" sound) (I stole this line from Brooks who swears he doesn’t remember saying it). The King of the Mountain crowd is out for blood and bragging rights. Forget a friendly wave from these riders, they won't even give you an inch of the trail. Look out, move over, and let them pad their Strava profile; they're clearly compensating for something. 

3. people who don't pack out their dog's poop

Leave No Trace applies to the front-country too. A baggie filled with dog poop sitting on the edge of the trail has to be the apotheosis of "leaving a trace." If you're not ready to pack out your dog's poop, you're not ready to take your dog out for a hike. Be prepared. Pick up your dog's poop in a bag, put it in a sealed zip lock bag, and pack it out. Or, better yet, buy a tube of Pringles. Eat all of the Pringles (delicious). Put the poop bag in the Pringles tube. It seals and fits nicely in a backpack's cup holder sleeve and you can dispose of its contents at the nearest trash can.

2. people who don't leash their dog on the trail

I don't want to be that edgy online guy advocating for Soviet-style forced labor camps but people who walk or run their dogs at the trail off-leash should be sent to a gulag. I don't care how good of a good boy you think your precious pup is, put it on a leash. It's the law in a lot of places and the rule in most. The reasons for this are multitudinous and readily available so I'll only mention two.

First, your dog is an animal. It has animal instincts and I swear bicycles trigger something in dogs that make them go berserk. I've had a crash, several near-crashes, and a few scary moments when unknown dogs have charged at my bike with their owner nonchalantly walking down the trail blurting something about it being nice. And I know you're reading this thinking, "That's not my dog." But that's what these people thought too.

Another reason to keep your dog on a leash is for my dog and dogs like her. I have a rescued pit bull. Her name is Lula. She's sweet, tender, intuitive, and an overall fluffernut. I love her more than almost anything in this world. But her breed carries a lot of baggage. Let's say your off-leash wonder pup wanders ahead and wants to check my dog out. Let's say it gives Lula a fright or more realistically, Lula interprets that as an invitation to play. (What is "play" between two dogs is often interpreted as a scuffle when the dog looks like my dog.) Your dog is an animal, my dog is an animal and they both respond animalistically. Guess whose dog is taking the blame for the scuffle? The pittie, every time. Even if the encounter was banal, benign, or not even the pittie's fault. Please put your dog on a leash.

1. judgemental outdoor bloggers named "Chet"

  They're the worst.

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