Life is not an all-or-nothing game
Our dog Roxie stands at the back door with the rest of the dogs, eager to go out after breakfast. She’s the only one whining, and I know what she wants. I chug the rest of my protein drink, slap my army green Castro cap on my head, and order the dogs away from the door so I can reach it.
We have seven dogs. This makes us crazy people, I know, but they all needed rescuing, and we have room. They run around on two acres, nap on dedicated dog couches, and have claimed their respective beds in the bedroom except for the two who sleep with us, snuggled between us and our cats. Our dogs are not without luxuries.
I reach for the handle to open the back door, and out they race. The “pups,” the four between the ages of two and three, nearly run over each other in their frenzy. Roxie, one of the three “old guard” between eight and ten years old, rushes to the yard, squats, and then trots back to the deck where I stand. Her rottweiler body, oversized relative to her small head courtesy of whatever breed, wiggles uncontrollably while she barks at me, insistent. By this time, the other dogs have gathered around, jumping and barking and eager for what comes next.
“Let’s go!” I say and begin to walk around the side of the house, swinging my arms back and forth like one of those boat rides at a carnival, a pendulum suspended in flight. It’s the only way I can keep the pups from jumping on me as we start. It’s exciting, our walk.
A Walk in the Park…Or Rather Our Yard
We walk as a pack, the pups running ahead of me with Roxie on my heels. The other two old guards linger behind, deciding whether to join us. The pups have already bounded up the thirteen concrete steps leading to the driveway. Roxie and I follow them while Shep, our gentle giant of a Golden Pyrenees, circles back to me and attempts to occupy every molecule of space that I do.
We continue on our path, three of the pups up ahead, Shep by my side, Roxie a foot behind me, and the other two old guards still trying to decide if it’s worth the effort. We walk west on the dirt path the dogs have made through patches of grass and rocks, around the back of the shed, east on another dog-made dirt path bordering our own mini forest leading to the lake below, and back to the deck. Six times around is a half-mile.
It wasn’t always like this. Back when we had three dogs, I walked them around a three-mile loop in our country neighborhood, with half the time spent fending off threatening dogs left to run loose. I purchased walking poles to aid in bad-dog fending and started Nordic walking with three leashes attached to my fanny pack. Think of cross-country skiing with tennis shoes for skis and concrete for snow.
Then three became seven. Because I can’t wrangle 370 pounds of dogs on a walk, I stopped. They have plenty of room to chase each other, I thought. Opportunities for exercise abound unless you’re a lazy, spoiled, middle-aged dog who seems to have a single memory: long walks around the block.
A New Daily Treat
It took a long time for me to figure out that all it took to satisfy Roxie’s need for a walk was our property. I discovered it on accident while walking back and forth to our shed one day. The dogs followed me at every step. Two acres to explore, yet a trip to the shed was exhilarating.
I decided to see what would happen if I walked a loop around our yard. I expected the dogs might follow me a little way before getting bored, sidetracked by a squirrel in a tree or a grasshopper leaping in the afternoon sun.
Instead, they followed me at every step, the pups occasionally veering off to inspect something in the grass, but always returning to the walk, running ahead, circling back to make sure I was following them, and then off again. Roxie eternally at my heels. She thought this was the greatest thing ever. No leash. No scolding to stop pulling. Freedom in our yard, one loop after another.
Our dogs aren’t the only ones who like our new routine. It’s become a daily treat for me as well. I’ve taken walks nearly all my life, first with my mother as a kid and then to exercise my dogs and myself. After I stopped walking the dogs around the neighborhood, I bought an under-desk elliptical. Despite peddling one to two miles a day while sitting at my desk, something was missing. Sunshine. Fresh air. Bonding with our dogs.
I feel silly, and a little guilty, that Roxie has gone a couple of years since our regular walks. I’ve taken her to the park a few times to walk the loop there, but I never made it a habit given the extra effort of driving somewhere for a walk.
Now, when we do our daily walk around the yard, I challenge myself to jog two or three loops. I’ve never been a runner, but I like getting my heart rate up, feeling sweat bead on my forehead, thinking to myself, “Just a few more steps and you’ll have made it,” whatever the goal of “it” happens to be that day.
Adaptation
In my years of being a pet mama, I’ve learned many things from my dogs. Perhaps I should call this Lesson 1, with more to come. It’s a foundational lesson, the one upon which all others build. If my dogs could talk, they would say…
Life is not an all or nothing game.
But they don’t need to talk. They showed me. All I have to say is, “Who’s ready for a walk?” and they jump around like we’re about to do the most tremendous thing ever.
I agree. It’s exciting to realize that life is not a binary string of ones and zeroes. Rather, life is about adapting. It’s a game of seeing what you can do with what you’ve got.
If my dogs can do it, I can, too.
Originally published in Indelible Ink on Medium on September 5, 2019.
Krista S. Schumacher 