Walking The Dogs

Saturday morning I arose at 5:40am....ate a banana, put on my exercise clothes, made my "to go" cup of coffee and kissed my husband goodbye. I was off to meet my friend Michelle for some good walking and talking.

I am known for not being a morning person except when I am going walking with Michelle.

Michelle always comes to my house to walk and we will either hike the perserve which is literally our back yard or we will walk the canal. When we walk the canal it is a three hour walk and our turn around point is my favorite place, Starbucks. We load up on a Chai Tea Latte and head on back. It is such a good time!

Typically we do this walk once a week. It is a great time for us to catch up on all that is going on with each other and to just get a good long walking session in. Hit that fat buring zone.

I always prided myself on being a fast walker. Michelle walks fast. Reeeeally fast. WOW.

So you can imagine what it was like when yesterday we had a change of plans and I made the trip to her house to help her walk her FOUR dogs: two huge golden retrievers (Buddy and Brophy), one black labrador (Ty) and the fourth is some kind of mix (Roxy).

OMG.....I am so sore. We walked them for one hour. My thighs are killing me. They drug me here...they pulled me there. They stretched me...they jerked me! They zoomed off erratically with the smell or sight of any bunny, squirrel, bird and dog. It was insane. Dodging other neighbors and their dogs by turning around and going the other way was also part of the program. Saying that I was slightly dizzy from the experience is an understatement! :)

As someone who owns no pets, I have to say that it was a lot of fun - and absolutely hillarious. It is something that my extraordinarily petite friend cannot do all by herself or she will no doubt get into a tangled mess and lose all four dogs. She has shown up on my front porch with road rash one too many times!

Since we were thoroughly warmed up after one hour with the dogs, we took them back to her home and headed back out to Starbucks for our traditional three hour walk. Caught up in all the garage and estate sales in the neighborhood we never made it to Starbucks but Michelle bought a great tuxedo for her son!!

It was a great morning. We got our training in and I was able to spend some special time with a dear friend and her wild but adorable crew!