Day 58

Good morning friends. I have realized that it may be better to write my blog posts later in the day (or even perhaps throughout the day) because as I have been reorganizing my life to include more physical activity, that morning run/walks are just the beginning of my “not training for a marathon” each day. I often do another brisk walk with the puppies in the evenings.  I apologize to those of you who use my morning blog posts as an inspiration to get some physical exercise done for yourself each day, but you will now have to use it as inspiration for the next day instead. I find it best to include all of my daily exercise walk/runs, which lately have been more than once each day.

I did not go to the track this morning. Instead I decided to walk with the puppies around the development. I normally walk the puppies more often in the evenings and walk with both Sara and Jane at the same time. This morning I did it a different way. I walked each puppy individually. I also used my handy dandy Nike + app to track how long and far I was actually walking. It turns out that if I walk three times around my development, it is the equivalent to walking just over one mile. I had originally thought I had to walk around the development four times to equal one mile.  So I was ahead of the game when I did my walks around the neighborhood instead of on the track.

I took Sara out walking first as she is no longer crated in the house at all. She is fully housebroken and does not mess with anything she shouldn’t mess with. She stays in her designated area of the house. She is so good. Anyway, I didn’t want to take Jane walking first and leave Sara whining inside the house to go out. I figured if I walked her first, she’d be nice and tired by the time we came back and then I could take Jane out and she wouldn’t mind.  Sara did really well on our walk. She walked alongside me with no pulling and did not get unfocused when we walked by the neighbors outside. Normally she would growl and try to get at them. I kept a steady pace and did not allow her to get unfocused. It was definitely easier to do this with one dog.  As we rounded up the last walk around the development, I could tell Sara was getting a little tired. I normally would only walk them around twice and bring them back. This third time around was definitely taking a little toll on her. When we arrived at home, she was happy to return to the back yard and headed straight for the water.

After bringing Sara into the house, I let Jane out of her crate, let her go relieve herself in the designated area of the backyard and then I brought her inside to prepare for our walk. I grabbed her leash out of the garage (which is where we leave from) and immediately Sara comes trotting out of the doorway and sat down next to Jane and waited for me to put her leash on. I then told her to go back inside the house and she cocked her head to the side as if to say “But what do you mean by that?” I had to guide her back into the house and close the doorway that led into the garage. When I closed the door, I heard her let out a slight whimper in protest but that was it.

I then went and walked another mile or so with Jane. I did a total of 2.65 miles this morning. It wasn’t the 5k but it was a great workout. I accomplished two things. I got my morning workout done and I gave the puppies a nice long walk as well. As with Sara, Jane started to get a little tired on that last go round. In the beginning she was eager to do the brisk walk and even tried sprinting a couple of times but as I said on that last walk around the development, she slowed down and made no further attempts at sprinting. Eventually, I will add a little more distance to each of their individual morning l walks as time goes by. I will also have to add a third round of morning walks when Julie is old enough to go for walks, but we’ll cross that doggie bridge when we get to it.

I’m not sure if I’m going to the track tomorrow. I am still in the process of reorganizing my personal life so it may in fact be easier to just work out downstairs or walk through the neighborhood with the puppies. I guess tomorrow will tell.

Until then…

Ms. P.