Porky the Poochy

My parents doggie is a darling little black lab. More widely she is known as "Pearl" (aka "Pearl the Wonderdog" or "The Black Pearl") but I've taken to calling her "Porky the Poochy." She has tended in the past toward a stature more portly than lean and it seems that, as she was the primary walker, my step-mom Marsha's spill on the bicycle has had its affect upon Pearl as well. I arrived a little more than a week ago to find the cutie to have porked up quite a bit in the five or six weeks since I saw her last.

Thus we have begun a doggie boot camp. Unfortunately it has been raining constantly since I arrived - and not just a passing sprinkle, buckets and buckets of it - but I just tell myself, "It's better than snow, it's better than snow." And once you've resigned yourself to getting wet and brought along the proper supplies (hat, rain jacket, towels for the dog) it is really quite pleasant. The first day I took Pearl for a walk she was seriously lagging after only 10 or 15 minutes and promptly passed out when we got home. She started improving almost immediately though so I've been extending the walks, making them faster and sometimes even walking her twice a day.

I may have pushed her a bit too much when I tried to introduce running on Saturday. We went down to the track at my old middle school and after walking a lap or two tried a little bit of jogging. At first she thought it was great fun, but a lap into it she was panting quite heavily and dragging behind me on the leash. So I thought maybe we would do a little bit of walking, then running, then walking and so on. Unfortunately the intervals of running quickly got shorter and shorter while the walking got farther and farther. After we'd done a mere six laps in all and she was dragging behind me as far back as the retractable leash would allow I dried her off and put her in the car while I ran a little bit more. Hours later, a warm and dry day inside behind us, Pearl kept looking at me with this terribly sad face as if to say, "Why were you punishing me? Whatever did I do to deserve such torture??" Poor thing.

I'm not giving up though. I've developed this game with her where we run around outside. First I run off in one direction and she promptly dashes ahead of me a good 20 yards or so. Then I call to her and change directions so she runs full speed at me and then tears off in the new direction. We do this over and over and she thinks it is great fun and I hardly have to work at all. I may be creating a monster though. This morning we went on a three mile walk and then romped around for a good half hour this evening and still she is all riled up and tearing around the house. I'm going to try running again on Thursday though - let's see how she handles that!