Apr 13, 2007

my running partner

i had a 4 mile recovery run today & i decided to use it to also get my former 4 legged running partner acclimated to running with me again. this dog is the fastest thing ever. she's a crazy combo of greyhound, pointer, whippet & i swear she's got some race horse in her. she's small, but fast & psychotic. figured she'd be great protection on pre-dawn runs & good motivation since she never stops running.

but we had a minor accident a few months back during marathon training, when a bike came by us; it scared her, she ran in front of me, & since we were literally attached at the hip by her leash, i tripped over her & we were both a tangled mess of crying dog & runner girl (also crying). that biker never even turned around to just see if we were ok! Anyhow, we were indeed fine that day, but my dog was rendered very bike / car shy & would stop dead in her tracks when one came by after that ... i lost patience with trying to coax her from her statue-sitting thing, and so i gave up on her ... left her home. she stopped getting all excited when she saw my running shoes on ... she knew she had no hope of coming with me. i had a schedule to ahere to, paces, times to meet ... how on earth could i stop everytime i car went by to try & pry her up from sidewalk??

well, for some reason i thought today was the day we could have another go at it ... it was just 4 miles, in the park ... what do you know? she was fine - the perfect running partner again. it was a constant stream of "good girl, good girl" from me every time a car came by & she kept going ... there was one biker that came by too close, and she stopped, sat & whimpered ... once the bike was out of sight, she was off again. she must have doggie post traumatic stress disorder or something. must take baby steps i guess ... i'm not real good at baby steps - i like it all to work out. perfectly. now.

my run was bad - slow, sloppy, tired; but the partner showed some signs of promise.

1 comment:

Tall Girl Running said...

I went running once with my sister's rat terrier, Wagner. Holy Crap, that was a mistake! He was not cooperating at all with my comfortable 9:30/mile pace, literally choking itself on the leash to try to get me to run faster. In the end, it was good for me (forced me to run a little out of my comfort zone), but I don't think I'll be trying it again anytime soon.