Corgi wonderland: Meet the ‘fairy steeds’ guiding Maine enchanted forest hikes

ELLSWORTH, Maine (WABI) - What makes a better hiking buddy than a dog? Thirteen of them!

A new offering in Ellsworth is giving visitors the chance to prance with a pack of stubby-legged forest guides.

This is courtesy of Corgi Bliss, a business owner Jennifer White says began about 15 years ago.

“My son wanted to get a corgi,” White explains. “I was already breeding German shepherds for years, so I decided to play around with little dog and have some puppies. And I was running a hiking business already at my horse farm, so corgis started going hiking about nine years ago.”

The new Ellsworth location boasts 56 acres of possibilities, just off Bar Harbor Road.

So far, an ADA-accessible trail of about one mile has been carved. Trinket boxes and fairy houses decorate the route, speaking to corgis’ illustrious history with forest sprites.

“Corgis are the fairy steeds of the forest in England, and so we kind of move that over here to beautiful Maine!” White says.

For tourists and locals alike, the corgis make for a walk in the Maine woods like no other.

Visiting from Chicago, Naomi David and her husband brought their two-year-old daughter, Remy, to the corgi hike Tuesday.

“You could do the hikes, which we did. You could go on a boat, which we did. But, I think these special experiences make a vacation really unique. And it was really fun for all of us,” David describes.

After the leisurely hike, attendees get to unwind alongside the sleepy corgis. Back at home base, they get the chance to meet the youngest puppies of the pack, who aren’t yet ready to hit the trails.

If you’d like to join these tail-wagging guides yourself, Corgi Bliss is open for hikes until late October.

Currently, hikes are hosted twice a day Wednesday through Sunday.

You can book through Airbnb Experiences or visit their website.