Bring Your Doggie To Training Day

Let me preface this post with the lack of actual running Jodi and myself have been doing for these last couple of weeks. In fact, I haven't seen her in forever. I should be running alone sometimes, but August is beyond Africa hot right now in Houston. It's more like the core of the earth hot. When I get home from work (early in the 5 hour), it's just too hot to run. If I wait out the heat to maybe Africa hot for a couple of hours, I have basically molded myself to my couch. It's a vicious cycle. I should do more in home workouts, but I have also gotten lazy. I want to run. God, I can't believe I just typed that. Yesterday, was our big 6 mile run in preparation for my first 10K on Saturday (so not prepared at all). Jodi and I weren't going to let anything stop us from running, until Jodi got sick. She was blabbing on about how she was going to still run, while coughing and sneezing. She sounded awful and I just couldn't do that to her. Well, I'm not going to be responsible for making her even more sick. I want her healthy for Saturday. So, we canceled our run. But I decided that I would at least do a quick run in my neighborhood to get the juices flowing. It had rained earlier and surprisingly, the temperature was cooler than usual.

My husband suggested that I take our Demon Spawn, Cali with me, because she needs to tire out. She managed to eat my husband's wallet (with a buttload of money we won at the Casino, ID, Social Security Card, Credit Card, etc.) and destroyed a bathroom hand towel. And I have actually thought about bringing my super hyper 1 year old Labrador Retriever puppy on some of runs/walks just so she can let out some of that energy, but we never seem to have a leash here for her. I decided to look in one place and viola, it was there albeit, alittle torn up. I did some stretches and then hooked her up to the leash for our run/walk. She nearly torpedoed me out the door and I thought, maybe this was a bad idea.

After a few "Heels", she got the hint and walked slightly without pulling my arm out of socket. A couple of times, I would walk past her when she stopped suddenly nearly yanking me back off my feet. You would think that someone would be prepared for that, but it happens quicker than you think. I took a longer way than my usual so that we could go by the pond. I figured Cali would love that and she did. She moved from side to side smelling everything. I began running and she followed one lap around the pound. I stopped running and decided to walk the rest of the way, because she has too many jolts of speed running that nearly knocks you down.

We walked some more and then got on my usual path. I noticed that she was breathing heavy, her drool was all over, and her pants were high. We got about halfway to the first stop sign when I noticed that my dog was heading to all the shaded areas. When she reached the end of the shade, she rejoined me on the sidewalk. Then, she got to the really long shaded bushes area and just let out some serious diarrhea. I realized that more poor Cali was overheating or in the first stages of it. So, I turned back around and headed home. She got slower and slower; however, when we reached our main street, she knew we were on our last stretch to home. She began picking up the speed more and more. When we got into the driveway, she nearly knocked me over trying to get inside the house.

The other two dogs were jealous, but they don't have as much energy as her and I can only take one dog at a time. We did what I hope was a mile, but I am not sure. I think I am going to try this again. It's a great arm workout, as well.

Today, we are trying to run. I hope it happens otherwise, I may die in Galveston.