I have started to play this fun game every morning called How Much Pain Can My Body Handle Within Moments Of Awakening After A Maximum Of Six Hours Of Sleep. Generally this involves running two miles, but some days I switch it up and try swallowing knives from the block in the kitchen, or burning off my hair one strand at a time. No matter which activity I purse, it is infinitely painful, especially because it is seven o’clock in the morning and I am hardly awake, let alone in the mood to undertake strenuous activity.
The dogs, however, love going on morning runs. Starting with Aisha, I run one mile, sprint up the stairs to the apartment, switch dogs, and run another mile with Kobe. I use this arrangement because it would be impossible to try running with both dogs simultaneously, as they cannot stop fighting and sprinting in opposite directions for long enough to be dragged ten feet. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to run two miles with them together, although I can guess it would certainly involve a search party or two, a trip to the vet for stitches, and a bottle of Johnnie Walker for me.
Even by themselves, however, the dogs are difficult to manage. In the words of my coworker, “Your dogs aren’t exactly running dogs.” He’s right. They may have buckets of enthusiasm and energy, but they have significant difficulty focusing that energy into running in a straight line at a pace of my choosing.
Aisha is by far the more difficult of the two. She is in her gangly phase, the time in her life where it appears that her bones are not attached by joints, but rather just blobs of Silly Putty. When we run, she sprints ahead of me at full speed, comes to a screeching halt as she reaches the end of the leash, and then whips around in midair as inertia throws the rear half of her body forward. To most sensible creatures, the pain that results from forcefully heaving your entire body against something wrapped around your neck would be sufficient to discourage further action. Instead, Aisha immediately turns back around, bolts forward, and flips again. These movements are often so dramatic that it is not unusual for her to tumble in a complete somersault, tail and legs flapping wildly.
She also does not take notice of impediments. While running the other morning, Aisha became so fixated on another pedestrian that she crashed head-first into a pole. She also leaps directly into tall grasses and shrubs that line the sidewalk, regardless of their size and density. When I can actually get her moving in a semi-straight line, she bounces alongside me, leaping up and down enthusiastically and snapping at the leash. It’s like trying to reel in a large, angry piranha with a small fishing rod.
Kobe is a much more sedate companion who is generally good for at least two miles of running. However, he has the minor quirk of trying to bite unsuspecting pedestrians. One morning, we ran past a man who was clearly on his way to work. Kobe immediately turned around and latched onto the leg of the man’s khakis, forcing me to wrench him away as I kept sprinting. On another occasion, Kobe snapped at an old man who in return threatened to beat my dog with his cane. I’m certain that Kobe would never actually bite a person – he just has a fixation on loose clothing that tends to scare his innocent victims.
Both dogs also have the innate ability to find the most inopportune times to poop. We could run through miles and miles of deserted fields and forests, but they will not stop to poop until we are crossing someone’s yard while the property owner collects their mail. The last two mornings, each dog has stopped within twenty feet of a group of at least thirty children who were waiting for their school bus. Having no bag on me, I had to choose between blatant acknowledgement of my failure to be a good Samaritan or pretending that I had no idea what was happening, despite the obvious squatting and the resulting pile. I opted for the latter, although I don’t think anybody genuinely believed that I thought my dogs were just stopping to sniff the flowers as things fell out of their rear ends.
Truth be told, however, their antics actually motivate me to keep running by providing distractions from the monotony. That, and thrill of knowing that at any point, my dogs may bite someone, run into traffic, or trip me into falling on my face.