Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Getting Sexy Back and Walking the Dog.

Now that I'm up walking almost every morning taking the kids to school, (unless the car is here and I can find a valid excuse to use the gas), I walk four miles in the morning. That doesn't count afternoon pickups. Today I've discovered my walking song....Sexy Back by Justin Timberlake. LOL! I know it's funny, but that's exactly what I plan on doing, getting my sexy back by walking off the weight.

During the summer I started walking three days a week in my subdivision and for two weeks I walked my dog, Vader, a black and white Pit Bull, with me. Everything was going great, I had him trained to not pull me down the street and run after squirrels. I had a week of not feeling well, so we had some down time. Once I decided to get my butt in gear and start walking again, I took Vader. Needless to say, the results were not pretty.

The morning started off great, it was beautiful and sunny, and early enough that the humidity hadn't kicked in yet. Vader sat looking at me, I swear I could hear him thinking, 'Your not taking me, this sucks!' , while I put on my shoes. I put on my ear buds, turned up the music and reached for the door. He lost his calm demeanor and stared to whine. I decided, "Okay, no problem, I've got him trained pretty well a couple of weeks ago so he won't be dragging me around too much."

Yeah right.

First of all, he was so excited I could hardly get the leash on since he was busy jumping and flipping around. Once the leash was on, I opened the door and he BOLTED out on a dead run. It took me throwing my entire weight, (which will not be disclosed at this time, suffice it to say I out weigh him by a lot and he pulls me like I'm a feather), in the opposite direction to get him to stop. I calmed him down, (yeah right), a little. And so we start to walk. All was well until we hit the infamous "squirrel alley", a corner where there are trees lining both sides of the street. I tried to stay vigilant so I would see the squirrels before he did, that way I could make him sit and be calm while we watched it cross the street, run up a tree, and then continue on our way. Until I meet a rouge squirrel we'll call "Speedy".

"Speedy", came out of nowhere, bolted across the street in front of us and ran up a tree. Vader saw him and ran like there was a sign advertising free steaks or something. The next thing I know, the metal part his leash was attached to BROKE and he ran right into the neighbors yard and jumped a good two feet up the tree, hung there for two seconds before sliding down. I stood there, mouth hung open and freaked, thanking God that the neighbors and their small dog and any young children were not outside. Vader is not a vicious dog but he is big and very friendly, he'll lick you to death first and has never bitten or tried to bite anyone. We've had him since he was three months old and he thinks he's one of my kids. He's such a big baby. But I digress....My now FREED dog realizes that I'm standing in the street while he is in the middle of a yard, no leash attached. So what does he do? He runs wildly through three yards ignoring the fact that I'm calling him. FINALLY, he realizes who feeds him everyday and decides to come trotting back, plopping himself down at my feet, sitting calmly as I reattach his leash to another part of his collar. The rest of the walk involved me, the pissed off owner, still being dragged down the street until we finally reached home. I was so mad! And to make it worse, the new leash we had came with a leather grip for you to hold onto. I had struggled with him so hard the leather had slid up and locked onto my wrist. It took ten minutes to work it back down far enough to free my hand.

Suffice it to say......I haven't taken him back out since, and that was over a month ago.

(For my friend, Donna!)