For the love of a little dog

Going through vet school, I clearly remember one lecture we had, where a professor quoted studies that showed the cardiovascular and social benefits of having a dog: you have to walk them so you get out more, you increase your potential of people stopping you because they want to pet your four legged friend, etc. I remember thinking that it made sense but that, surely, when it came to wanting to get out or not, having a dog could not make that much of a difference. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

We got Heidi Dog from a shelter. She was a 7 month old black Retriever (this point is debatable) who had been surrendered the day before. It was literally love at first sight. We walked by her kennel on a sunny summer Sunday, asked to see her, and never left her ever since. But Heidi dog, fully Retriever or not, seems to have inside her an Iron Man like device that provides her with a never ending source of energy. The things we have lost to Heidi to these days are numerous and varied: boots, slippers, stuffed animals, a bit of carpet, a couple of glasses, sport bras, T-shirts, an unopened bag of food etc. She quickly acquired the name of Black Destroyer / Dark Night (she mainly operates at night).

I started running Heidi, in a hope that I would reduce her Iron Man like powers and would take enough energy out of her that eating non digestible objects would no longer seem appealing. I used to be a runner, I think a decent one. Through vet school, I took it to a whole new level, ran hundreds of kilometres a months and raced my heart out. I would go out every day I would get a chance, even if that meant getting out at 530am with a headlamp to do a loop of the town in the pitch black, on concrete and in the rain. There is a man called John. He is my friend and for years was my classmate, housemate and running buddy. Together we tackled random 50km training runs, our first ultra, first 100km, then first 100 miler. He would get me out of the house the days I really didn’t feel like it and vice versa. We both had ups and downs when it came to running but these up and downs were somehow never synchronised. So there was always on to pull the other one back up. Looking back, I can see how a running partner, and a friend I saw every single day, made a big difference in making me get out no matter what.

I haven’t been really good at running here in Michigan. I haven’t done nothing at all but by logging in 600-700 miles/year tops, it certainly doesn’t feel like much. There are various reasons as to why that is, but the main one that I didn’t really have the fire in me anymore. For a while in Michigan, everything inside me was dim. After a few months, I met Krista and Matt through work, and then Christian through them, and that made a big difference. There were always game for an adventure or a run and quickly became my running family. I started to get my fitness back, slowly, and shared many trails with them. They will forever be one of the most positive things that happened to me in Michigan, something I am most grateful for. But still, in between adventures or big goals, I wouldn’t always get out. Be it because of cold, or darkness, or a massive day at work, I would often choose the treadmill and the gym over getting out (I had become that person…). And more often than not, I would choose nothing at all during the week.

Enters Heidi, lover of all things outdoors. It is one thing to disappoint yourself in not getting out. And it is one thing to know you are not doing the best for your body or your soul by taking the path of least resistance once you get home. I think as human beings we have the capacity to justify anything to ourselves, even with the most flawed arguments. But even the most flawed arguments become empty shells when there is a dog involved. Heidi got me out of the house every day, because I felt like I had a true responsibility to get her outside. I kept telling myself “She needs to run, otherwise she is going to be miserable and bored”. We have been running on an almost daily basis. With every mile we cover together, I feel we are knitting the threads of an incredible friendship. I love watching her discover the world one smell at a time and have this untamed enthusiasm for everything and anything. I love to watch her eventually lay across the floor after we’ve come back from a run, and produce snoring sounds of happiness and exhaustion. I have loved to see her path of destruction drastically reduced through running, and I am both astonished and amazed to be able to say that to date, since Heidi Dog became a runner, we have not lost a single shoe to the Dark Night, her nocturnal alter ego.

We have covered some good ground together, and it didn’t take me long to realise that what I thought I was doing for Heidi, she did for me. I too, get miserable and bored when I don’t run. But it seems like we are often better at taking care of others than we are ourselves. I have been bored out of my mind at work, longing for Spring and new horizons. But I get home and she gets me out the house. She expects that we go running, the way I should expect it from myself. She doesn’t care how far we go, as long as we get out. She is amazed at everything and find joy in the simple fact of being with her loved ones. It sounds so corny, doesn’t it? Almost like a commercial for something pet related. But it couldn’t be closer from the truth.

The LifeOutdoorsProject is a blog about getting out there. This is a post on how a little dog showed me the path again, because that little dog doesn’t ask herself questions. She knows (but does she know that she knows?) that outside is good – something I want to believe is truly in our genes – and so we got to get outside. The dark, the snow, the wind, the cold, the rain.. they don’t really matter. And as I finish writing this post, she’s looking at me, her head resting on my thigh with her puppy eyes that seem to say “Are you going to stay on this computer all day or shall we get going?”.

No if you will excuse us, the outdoors are calling (and, of course, we must go).

Happy Trails,

AHF X