These dedicated washing stations, a practical luxury of sorts, keep dogs from tracking mud through the ... after a shower, and you don’t want to have to run to another room to grab them.

It was a wet winter, and our favorite walk became waterlogged and slick with slimy mud ... shower. I didn't want to just take my dog on pavement walks, as she's a sighthound and loves to run ...

Uh, no. Meiers and her teammates were signed up to compete in the one event on the planet that could have been run in a monsoon — the seventh annual Big Sur Mud Run, a 5-mile gloppity-glop ...