Radar Love

I have a new running partner who is always really excited to go run. The downside is that this new running partner often has to stop and poop while we’re running. No, it’s not Beth, it’s our new dog.

Back in September of last year we lost our 11 year old Alaskan Malamute to a combination of illnesses and old age and it’s not an exaggeration to say that our family was devastated. (Pictures and stories about him here and here.) Initially I told Candis I wouldn’t be able to own another dog for at least a year and she heartily agreed, suggesting that it might be even longer. After a month and a half without a dog the house was feeling pretty empty and we started looking at animal shelter websites. Two weeks after that we were visiting animal shelters in person and fell in love with a 9 month old Boxer/Australian Cattle Dog mix. I’d like to introduce you to the newest member of our family and my new running partner, Radar:

Why did we name him Radar? Take a look at those ears!

Other than the pooping he’s been great to run with thus far. It only took him a couple of months (and a lot of cursing) to figure out that I didn’t want him to cross right in front of me while we’re running. He’s also picked up this annoying habit of pooping twice when we run in the mornings which was especially unfortunate the first couple of times since I was only carrying one poop bag. True story, one time he pooped on the lawn in front of a competitor bank and I happily left it there. Do you ever wonder what dogs are thinking when they see us picking up their fecal matter? Do they think we’re saving it for some reason or collecting it? It must seem weird.

I’ll leave you with one final picture of him trying to look like Scooby Doo.

Half-Fast Friday

One of the routes that I run through my neighborhood goes past the back of some houses that have 6 foot privacy fences lining their yards. Several of the houses have dogs all of whom bark at me and one of them even jumps so high that his head pops up over the top of the fence. Somehow I am always startled by this, even when I know it’s coming and prepare myself for it. Then his head pops up and he barks at me and I can feel myself jolt. I used to wonder if he was really jumping that high or if there was something on his side of the fence that he was standing on like a table or piles of dead runners that he’d somehow managed to grab. Then I saw this video (via WG). I wonder no more.



Let me add a note here to say that I own a dog and I love dogs, but I absolutely can’t stand it when dogs bark at me from their yards. Just leave me alone bitch! (Get it, bitch, because it’s a female dog! These are the jokes you get on Half-Fast Friday.)

Running on my Off Day

I ran last night when I got home. I wasn’t scheduled to run, but I did anyway. Normally I love those scheduled off days or cross training days as my schedule prefers to call them. I love getting home at night and knowing that I don’t have a run scheduled almost as much as I love Hot Waffle Ice Cream Sandwiches, so what made me go run last night? This did:

How could I say no to that face? He just kept looking up at me with those big brown eyes, and then he’d jump up and go run to the back door. He was like Lassie trying to tell me that Timmy was stuck in a well, except he couldn’t have cared less about Timmy, he just wanted to sniff things and pee on them.

He hasn’t been able to run with me for a few weeks now because he can’t handle running further than 3 or 4 miles (he’s 8 years old) and all my training runs of late have been longer than that. He’s an Alaskan Malamute, just like those canines in Snow Dogs or Eight Below, except those movies are full of crap. For example, did you know that an Alaskan Malamute can’t run for more than 30 minutes without starting to drag way behind. I once took him on a 5 mile run with me and thought I was going to have to carry him home, and he weighs 90 lbs. Also, I’m not sure why they are classified as a ‘working breed’ since he’s never worked a day in his life. Of course there’s really not much time for it in between the 18 hours of sleeping, the licking oneself, and the dreaming of licking oneself. It’s a pretty busy schedule he keeps.

Nevertheless we went running last night. We ran 2 easy miles, and he acted like he was exhausted afterwards. He barely had enough energy to stick to his evening agenda, which looks like this:

• Circle.
• Lick self.
• Go outside.
• Come back inside.
• Go outside.
• Come back inside - continue ad infinitum (word score 4 points – take that Nitmos!)
• Wait until ‘Dad’ starts watching TV, then play with loud squeaky toy.
• Sleep.

Running With A Son Of A ...

I went running with my dog today. That’s him in the picture on the left, he’s cute right? Yeah, only because you haven’t tried to run with him. He gets to come with me every now and then when I’m running one of my easy runs and when I’m not doing my run on the treadmill, because that was just a disaster when we tried that.

Why is he difficult to run with? First of all we have to stop and pee on every hydrant, fence, shrub, lamppost, bush, and park bench during the first half mile of the run. Yeah I said ‘park bench’, but you ought to be more concerned that I said ‘we’. It’s really difficult to settle in to your pace when you keep taking these breaks every hundred yards, and don’t even get me started on how big a disruption it is when he has stops to take a deucer. Have you ever tried to run while holding a foul smelling bag of dog feces as far from you as possible? Yeah, if you’re laughing you’d better be outside of throwing distance.