Woman Drives Two Hours to Walk Dogs, Then Realizes What She Left Behind

A woman drove for hours to go on a brisk hike, only to realize she had forgotten her dogs’ leads, but it wasn’t going to stop her bringing the pups along on the adventure.

Paulina, 32, took to TikTok on May 13 where she shared a video of her Yorkshire terrier exploring the wilderness, with only a USB cable attached to his harness. She wrote: “POV [Point of view]: You drove 2hrs for a hike only to realize you didn’t take leads so you have to walk them on USB cables.”

Project manager and content creator Paulina told Newsweek that she brought her dogs, Maltese Mr. Bates and Yorkshire terrier Carson, walking on the North Pennines moorlands in England with her boyfriend and his mother.

“After driving for two hours, we were pretty excited to get out and explore,” Paulina said, “only to realize that neither of us took the leads.”

Paulina’s first thought was that they would have go straight home, but they had all been so excited about the trip she decided to “see what I can do to still be able to walk the fluffs.”

Looking in her car, she found the bag of cables meant for the charity store, and “decided to use USB cable to walk Carson and ripped off the headphones’ cable to walk Bates. It worked! I don’t think they even realized it wasn’t their leads,” she said.

It looked like the last-minute innovation worked wonders, as they set off on their hike without any issues, though she said they “got many weird looks along the way”.

And, replying to a TikTok commenter who wrote she had once had to walk her dog with headphones when she didn’t have a lead, Paulina said that the second dog on a walk, Mr. Bates, had been walked in the wilderness with the exact same thing.

Paulina wrote, in a video showing both dogs strolling along a stream with a USB cable and wired headphones: “That’s what we did for the second dog! He is walked on headphones’ cable.”

Paulina said she had the DIY leads in the car as she had been due to drop items to a charity store, but “safe to say, they are not getting headphones and USB cables anymore.”

Despite the unusual looks the hikers received, the most important thing was that their dogs stayed safe and were close by, unable to run away or get lost.

The Mountaineers alpine club in the state of Washington writes that “as a hiker, you are responsible for your own actions. As a dog owner, you have an added responsibility: your dog’s actions.”

“Hikers who take their dogs on the trails should have their dog on a leash, or under very strict voice command, at all times,” the club says, adding: “Even if your dog is absolutely trained in voice command and stays at heel without a leash, sometimes leashes are required by law or just by common courtesy, so you should have one handy at all times.”

Luckily, Paulina’s quick thinking meant that both she and her pups were safe on their hike.

“Walking them off the lead was not an option,” she told Newsweek. “They don’t have a good recall; typical small dogs, they do what they want. Plus, Carson is a very reactive dog; he would start a fight with anyone for absolutely no reason. Last time I left him off the lead thinking it was safe to do, he was trying to start a fight with a cow.”

Paulina added that terrier Carson’s hunting instincts are strong, “so, as soon as he picks up a scent of a rabbit, for instance, he would be gone. So I needed to find a solution.”

And her DIY lead story certainly isn’t unique, as TikTok users flooded the comments in their hundreds to share similar ways they were forced to improvise, with one user calling Paulina “resourceful”.

“Have walked my dog on a dressing gown belt before now,” one commenter wrote, and another shared: “This reminds me of when my granddad couldn’t find his dog’s lead and we saw him walking her on a bit of string.”

But it’s always better to have a proper lead to hand, as one user’s story highlighted: “I did this with a rope once and then my dog saw a squirrel and ran, I got dragged for miles and some serious rope burn.”

Paulina said she never expected her video to go viral, but just “found it so funny and thought some people would too. I just didn’t realize how many people will love it!”

Despite a few initial commenters accusing her of being “irresponsible” for not having backup leads in the car, Paulina said the “majority of people found it extremely funny and shared their own stories, too, which was brilliant to read.”

Paulina added: “They say necessity is a mother of invention so who knows; maybe in months to come, Carson and Bates will be trendsetters in a dogs’ world with their trendy leads!”

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