dog walkers

so today . . . we walked the dogs. and i cooked. i'm pretty sure they are passing out coats and mittens in hell...

things have kind of gotten out of control around here. (is gotten even a word? i mean, i know i don't use capital letters when i blog. and i've totally butchered all the grammatical rules of sentence structure and paragraph formation. by choice. for effect. but i think i draw the line at using words like 'wanna' and 'gonna.' i'm just not sure if gotten fits into that category...) we have been busy. we have no consistency or predictability to our schedules. when we come home from work, there is always something that needs to be done. and on those rare times when nothing is demanding our immediate attention, we sort of just want to sit. we don't want to go change into our sneakers and walk the dogs. or cook. i know these are two separate issues, but for some strange reason, in my mind they are connected...

i know we need to walk the dogs--mia needs to expend some of her excess energy, which she usually reserves so that she can bark at whatever happens to walk past our house, and milo... well, milo is chubby. exceptionally chubby. i worry about milo's weight. and mine, just a little bit, because i have noticed that i can no longer eat a dozen chocolate chip cookies from del taco all by myself in one day and still comfortably get into my jeans. and i'm not buying bigger jeans! at least, not yet...

i've been planning to walk the dogs for quite some time now. in fact, it has been one of my new year's resolutions for the past few years. but since i keep making the same resolution over and over and over again, you can probably figure out that my follow through is not all that good. i've read that to be consistent with exercise, you need to "buddy up" with someone. of course the logical someone for me to buddy up with is rollie. i've brought it up a few times, but he always scoffs and sneers and looks at me like, "what?!? do i LOOK like a little old lady?? walking isn't REAL exercise. REAL exercise requires a ball and rules and a referee. besides, you would never be able to keep up with me. i would have to walk so slowly to stay with you, that it wouldn't do any good at all."

(i feel i should just point out here that rollie never actually said any of those words. that is just the conversation that happened in my head when i said, "maybe you should walk with me," and he looked at me with an expression of confusion and disbelief. i don't recall he ever actually said any words. but i could read it all in his face...)

and truthfully, i didn't really push it. because if he walked with me then i couldn't listen to my ipod--i would be forced to have a conversation. not that i don't like to talk to my husband, it's just that i never get to listen to my ipod, and walking is the perfect opportunity. plus, if rollie decided he wanted to walk with me, then i couldn't wimp out. i would have to go. every day. and while one part of my brain really wants that, another part just wants to watch tv and drink soda pop. and so, it has been several months since i walked the dogs...

and then, a couple of weeks ago, rollie came home from a meeting and said, "i think we should start walking the dogs together."

whaaaat?!?!?! seriously?!?!??!? because as i said, every time i brought it up, his expression pretty much said, "walking is sissy exercise!" but instead of reminding him of that, i just said, "thank you Jesus!" and listened to his plan. he had apparently heard a speaker talk about stress and health and how walking was probably the best daily exercise to do--it can be done anywhere, any time, it doesn't require any special equipment or a gym membership, and half an hour a day is adequate. rollie, of course, thought we should walk an hour. because, you know, if half an hour is adequate, then an hour would be better! so last monday, we walked the dogs...

the first obstacle was getting them leashed up. they are used to wearing collars, but when we walk them, they need harnesses. because mia thinks she is a contender for the kentucky derby, and milo thinks he is a big dog, capable of taking down any cat or rotweiller we happen to encounter. yes, they can be a little hard to control... rollie, bless his little pink heart, was going to walk mia. he thought she should sit and stay while he put her harness on, and then walk calmly beside him. silly boy! clearly he has never walked mia. she gets so excited to go for a walk that she can't stop wiggling and jumping around. and the more he said, "mia! sit!" the more excited she got! and then, there's milo. he is perpetual motion. and trying to get his harness snapped around his chubby little body is always a challenge. but we finally managed to get the harnesses on and the leashes clipped and headed out the door into our new neighborhood. with our dogs. for the first time. together...

since our dogs are different sizes--as are rollie and i--finding a pace we can all live with isn't that easy. we all start out really fast, but milo fades first. when milo fades, we all slow down. the first day we walked, he didn't even make it half way around the block. and when i say he didn't make it, what i mean is he just stopped walking. he stopped. he wouldn't budge. he plopped his 18 pound body down and refused to move. he was done. so, i picked him up and carried him the rest of the way. mia was glad to pull rollie along, and since we had only been walking for about five minutes, i just kept going... carrying our 18 pound chihuahua.

that was day one. on day two, milo made it quite a bit further. on day three, he did pretty good again, but still needed to be carried about half of the way home. rollie had seen me carry milo the previous two days, me with my scrawny little arms, and so he thought he would be nice and give me a break. he took milo in his arms and gave me mia's leash. we hadn't gone far when he said, "this dog is heavy! i don't know how you carried him so long!!" i know he was thinking, "i don't know how you carried him so long with those scrawny little arms," but he didn't say it. he didn't say it, because my scrawny little arms had carried that fat, little dog longer than his big muscular arms had. "it's the mom in me," i said. "moms have to be able to carry at least 20 pounds around. think about how much toddlers weigh!" i don't really mind carrying milo while we finish walking. i've seen people walk with hand held weights for increased exercise benefits--my extra 20 pounds is just furry and cute! but we do get some funny looks...

our neighborhood is pretty quiet. it is a walled community. walled, not gated. which means that anyone can get in, but why would they? there is no place to go! the only traffic at 5:00 at night are people coming home from work who live here. this is great for us, because we have to walk our unruly pets in the street...

we have to walk our unruly pets in the street for a couple of reasons. first of all, the sidewalk isn't wide enough for all four of us, which makes talking impossible. and secondly, milo feels the need to mark every vertical surface he passes. and some horizontal ones too! if we walk on the sidewalk, it takes us FOREVER to get around the block. so we walk in the street, which doesn't completely deter milo from marking the whole neighborhood as his territory--he just looks for car tires, garbage cans, the occasional random pine cone, the CURB... milo doesn't so much walk for the exercise as he walks for the opportunity to do his business someplace other than his own yard.

the first day we walked, i forgot to take a plastic bag in case he pooped. i say 'in case,' but it is not so much a possibility as an inevitability. milo always poops when we walk. always. but since it has been a while since we walked, i forgot to take a bag. and sure enough, halfway around the block, he stopped. i knew what was about to happen. he was going to make a doggie bomb right there in front of God and everybody... including the two neighbors that just happened to be in their front yards. and i didn't have a bag! this was not good, not good at all. i tried to keep him moving. i thought if i could just keep him walking, maybe he could wait...

he couldn't.

and there is was. right in the middle of the street in front of the entrance to our neighborhood. and we had no bag. we were in deep and serious you know what... we couldn't just walk on like nothing had happened! people had seen us!! and there was physical evidence! so rollie and i had this loud conversation about how, oh no, we had forgotten to bring a bag but it was ok, we would just go home and get one and walk around the block again and pick up milo's little gift the next time we came by...

i'm pretty sure those neighbors went into their houses and watched for us to return. they probably had their phones in hand, ready to dial the city poop police if we didn't come back and clean up after our pup. which, of course, we did. talking loudly again, just so that everyone within earshot would know that we are NOT the kind of people who walk our dogs and let them poop wherever they want to and then just walk off and leave it! no sir! we are the kind of people who will go out of our way to make sure our streets are safe for people to walk on after dark without fear of, well, you know...

it's stressful being the new kids on the block...