More Adventures in Walking

Some things have happened in my dog-walking world since I last wrote about how much I hated it. Truth is, I loved it for a short period of time. Then I started thinking about what Cesar Milan would say about my walking technique and I found that I started trying to force my dogs to behave - and it was making all of us miserable!

I stopped walking them for awhile because I just became so frustrated with their behavior! I was also frustrated with the fact that Sam, my lab, just wasn't tired after our walks. He seemed like he could go on for another 3 hours, if I let him! All that to say, I knew that I needed a different strategy.

I know that I told most of you that I was thinking of training for the half-marathon in January, and somehow, in conversation, it came out that Amanda (Adam's sister, and our weekly American Idol/Wii buddy) was also interested in running it! We were both happy to learn this, since we're both in similar physical condition and we wanted a partner to train with. We were supposed to start this morning, but, while both of us overslept our alarms, she unfortunately had no one there to nudge her and tell her to turn the darn thing off!

Since she couldn't run with me, I decided that Sam would be my running partner today. So we set off at about 11:45 and did our run/walk. I say "run/walk" because I literally can't run for more than 5 seconds without wanting to throw up!

He was an amazing partner. After getting to the park area, I let him off his leash (first time ever!!) and he stayed with me the whole time! He ran ahead a few times, but always came back for me. I had a total blast! I think he probably had a great time too. We came back for round 2 with Kona and took a nice, leisurely walk where they both got to run a bit without their leashes. I only had one or two moments when I thought they'd run away, so I was pretty happy!

The funniest moment of the whole thing was when we were walking beside a lake and taking it easy. All of a sudden, Sam jumped in and started swimming around!! I was laughing so hard! I had no idea how he was planning on getting out, since the ledges came up pretty high, but he managed to jump out to safety - much happier, and cooler!

All in all, today was a great day for walking my dogs!