Ok so in my last post I mentioned that I had a couple of encounters with some K-9 friends on my Sunday run. Now the nice thing about getting out early in the morning, especially on the weekend is that there are very few cars on the road. The not so nice thing, everyone is out walking their dogs. Now don’t get me wrong I like dogs a lot, and according to my son I will be getting one very shortly! But sometimes some owners just don’t get it. What do I mean?? Well, here I was 4km or so into my run and feeling pretty good when I ran into the park in my neighbourhood and began to run around the path on the perimeter of the soccer fields. I could see that there was two people walking a couple of dogs on the other side and knew that I would have to pass by them shortly but didn’t think too much about it. As I got closer I could see that there was actually 4 fairly large dogs being walked by two older guys and by being walked I mean they were walking beside the dogs and holding on to the leashes that should have been attached to the dogs. Not good I thought. As I approached the pack of dogs I was a little tentative but I figured my labouring breath would be enough to scare them away from me. Wrong. When I was about 40 feet from them the owners were giving them treats, when I was 30 feet away they noticed me approaching, and when I was 15 feet away the largest one had a line on me and was running towards me with what I swear was a slobber filled smile! Now anyone who has ever had a back problem knows sudden jolting movements are not good for you and can put your back out just as easily as putting on your boxers in the morning. 🙂 Needless to say I had to slow, almost stop rather quickly and wait until the owner called the dogs off and let me continue on my way. Nice eh? So off I went, after mumbling something under my breath (something I can’t repeat here) and continued around the path. Well wouldn’t you know it less that 800m later when I am getting ready to leave the park area and get back onto the road I hear the sound of dog tags coming up behind me. Before I know it there is some yappy little fur ball not on a leash, running in front of me and almost taking my legs out from under me! So again I slow and in fact I had to stop because the dog wasn’t leaving and the owner was taking his sweet time coming to get him!! Nothing more frustrating that having to lose your momentum because of a dog not on a leash or a lost motorist asking you for directions while you are in the middle of a run!
Now as I mentioned before I like dogs and will have one in my family some time in the future. But at that particular point in time I found myself thinking of the movie Anchorman and the scene when the character played by Jack Black punted Ron Burgundy’s dog Baxter off the bridge. If I could have I would have substituted Baxter for the dogs owner and done some punting of my own.
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