Running Chick

Here’s a gigantic picture of me & Zoe, our new dog.

Zoe was living in Negaunee with her foster family but she came from a shelter in Texas where she was picked up as a stray.  We’ve been wanting a dog for a while, but our old place was small and had a small yard, not exactly dog appropriate. Now that we’ve moved out to BFE and have a bigger house with a lot of land, it was time. We adopted her through the Because of Mandy shelter in Calumet.

Zoe is about 8 months old and is some sort of shepherd mix. I’ve been told she looks like a miniature German Shepherd, but I don’t know what else is in her mix. We picked her up last night and spent most of the evening cleaning up after her. Not exactly as housebroken as I would have liked.  I’m hoping that was just because of the new environment and all the excitement. Fortunately, she is crate trained, so she stayed in there in the night and didn’t have any accidents.

I took the day off to spend some quality time with her, so off we went shopping for a new leash, collar and harness, then we went running. Zoe’s primary job will be to accompany me on my runs. I’m not an overly paranoid person, but what with living out in the boonies where there are wolves and bears and cougars and creepy looking dudes, it was either get a dog or get a gun.  I would probably shoot myself if I ever had to use a gun, so yeah. Dog.

I had four miles on the schedule and since this was Zoe’s first run, my plan was to do them slowly. Our run started at the Houghton waterfront park and we went to campus to visit Josh, then we ran back.  Our first mile was a little rocky with lots of getting tangled in the leash, stopping to sniff stuff and attempting to eat random things, 13:53. Second mile was better, she started to get the hang of running (or, trotting, really) beside me, less tangles, less sniffing, no eating random stuff, 12:06.

After a quick stop on campus to visit with Josh and other random IT nerds who happened to walk by (Uncle James!), we started our journey back to the park. She ran right by my side, no random veering in my path, no stopping. I did discover that she seems to be pretty skittish around cars and seemed a little freaked out at the lunchtime traffic on College Avenue so we worked our way back down to the waterfront trail. We did 12:02 for this mile.

Our final mile was the fastest and the best. Either she’s a really quick learner or she was just too tuckered out to care, but she stuck by my side or a little bit ahead of me and we just cruised along. She got a little distracted by the guys setting up the Kiwanis chicken barbeque at the Dee Stadium, but I don’t blame her, I did too. It smelled so good. Anyway, our final mile was a speedy 11:19.

She had a quick dip in the canal afterwards (ice bath!) and did some stretching in the grass (injury prevention!).

Now she’s sacked out in her crate (recovery!)

Check out those long legs. Wonder if ProCompression makes socks in her size?