Training for 8/11/14

Pepper had a big weekend!

Saturday morning, I took him to the Run for the Paws 5K in Dewey, to do the 1-mile dog walk. Almost as soon as we got out of the car, we saw Fredman, the local newspaper photographer who volunteers to take high-quality photos at nearly every single Seashore Striders race, which he immediately posts to Facebook so they can be downloaded for free. He asked us to pose for a picture. I was telling Pepper to “Look!” but he didn’t care about the guy with the camera haha.

I walked to The Starboard to get my bib and event shirt, where we saw Alberto, another guy who takes tons of pictures for the Seashore Striders Facebook page. Once again, Pepper was not interested:

We walked over to the start area and got all the way in the back of the nearly 400-strong crowd, which felt weird. There were a lot of dogs there. Most of them were checking each other out, sniffing butts and barking, and a couple even got in some little scuffles, but my snobby-ass dog completely ignored every single one of them haha. This inspired a lot of people to tell me what a well-behaved dog he is. If only they could see our utility room!

We got the start commands. Most of the field took off running ahead of us. I held Pepper to a walk. We moseyed on down to the turnaround half a mile from the start/finish line with all the other walkers and their dogs. There was a water bucket at the turnaround, which Pepper wanted all to himself. I had to drag him away from it to let the other dogs get a chance.

On the way back, Pepper copped a squat right in someone’s driveway and took a big steaming dump. Gah! I thought he’d taken care of that before we left the house in Fenwick, but apparently I was wrong. Fortunately, another woman had a bag with her, so I could clean it up. The 5K winner ran by while I was scooping up Pepper’s crap.

Here’s Pepper and me on our way back to the finish. I’m annoyed I had to clean up his mess, and he’s thrilled he got to watch me do it again:

What a jerk!

Pepper and I finished the mile in a blistering 21:35, slower than three of the five 5Ks I ran this summer. Other than the poop scooping, it was fun though!

We went over to The Starboard for the post-race party. As soon as we got there, Pepper found another bucket of ice water and sucked down half of it. I let him have as much as he wanted that time, since there were a ton of water buckets all over the place for all the dogs. When he’d had his fill, we took 10 steps farther, before I was confronted by an SPCA volunteer who pointed me in the direction of the water buckets, because my dog looked so desperately thirsty.

I resisted the urge to tell her she was a moron and instead politely informed her he’d just drank half a bucket. She looked completely shocked, but then told me to sprinkle water on his head to cool him off. I told her he hates getting wet and slipped away. I got some food for myself and a couple of dog treats for Pepper and found a spot to sit down — where she found us so she could again insist he totally needed water, and then throw some on his head anyway! Which he absolutely hated, of course!

I can only imagine what it’s like to try to be a parent out in public, as freaking judgy as people get about a dog who’s panting a little! I overheard another guy who had two dogs complaining about her trying to water his dogs for him too, so at least I wasn’t the only incompetent-looking pet owner there.

At 9 a.m., the bar opened and we could get one free drink each. The thing was, I couldn’t take Pepper to the bar area to wait in line with me, and I didn’t know anyone else there well enough to ask them to hold Pepper while I waited in (the very long) line, during which time he’d absolutely have a panic attack. I was tired of getting harassed by the SPCA lady and Pepper was tired of all the people who wanted to pet him anyway, so we just went back to the house in Fenwick.

When we got there, Clark decided that would be the day Pepper found out swimming wasn’t so terrifying after all. The canal was only a couple feet deep, so Clark got in and had me put Pepper in with him. We tried to just kind of shove him in, but Pepper wasn’t cooperating at all. Unfortunately for Pepper, at only 60 lbs., he’s too small to get his way, because when I couldn’t push him in, I just picked him up and lowered him in.

Predictably, he freaked out at first. But Clark held him, and he calmed down and started doggy paddling. He never enjoyed it though. As soon as Clark let him go, he made a bee-line for the dock:

LAND HO!!

Clark helping Pepper out of the water.

We were hoping once he’d gotten used to the water, he’d fetch a tennis ball we threw in there. Nope! He did the same thing he always did — ran to the edge of the dock, peered over the side at the ball in the water, and then looked at us like, “Well, which one of you is getting that back, because I’m not!”

We also tried to get him back on the paddleboard, but he wasn’t having that either. He will never be a water dog. Oh well.

Clark and I spent the rest of the day at the beach house with his dad and my cousin Corey, who stopped by after my family cleared out of the rental condo. Clark and I left in the late afternoon, showered at home and then took Pepper to Glenn and Lauren’s house for a birthday party.

Pepper spent the whole evening trying to ignore or reluctantly playing with Glenn and Lauren’s huge Lab, Marley, and someone else’s 11-week-old Lab puppy, Drake. Clark and I, meanwhile, killed all comers at beer pong. OK, we only played two games, but we destroyed the other team both times!

Sunday morning, Clark got up to feed Pepper breakfast. When he came back to bed, he said Tony Stewart had killed someone with his car the night before. I said, “What, like he hit a pedestrian?” and he said no, he’d struck another driver with his race car at a dirt track. Clark sometimes makes up dumb stuff so he can laugh at me when I believe him, and I immediately thought this was another one of his jokes. So I told him he was making it up, and he said nope, I should go look at my phone. It was true, unfortunately. What an all-around crap situation.

I went back to sleep for a couple of hours, and then woke up in a near-panic at 9 a.m. because my friends were supposed to be at my house in three hours to celebrate Julie’s birthday, and I’d put off cleaning the entire house and buying the Coke I’d promised I’d have there for them to drink. Because I procrastinate at everything.

It was a hectic few hours, but we got all the cleaning done, I got the Coke and I was showered just before my friends started arriving. Pepper was in a huff nearly the whole time, with all these strange people in his house. We had a good few hours of hanging out. When they left, Clark and I watched the rest of the NASCAR race and then the end of the golf tournament. I laughed when one of the announcers said, near the end of the tournament, which apparently was relatively exciting for golf, “If you’re not enjoying this, you shouldn’t be watching golf!” I wanted to say “You’re right!” and change the channel, but Clark likes it, so I stuck out the whole thing for him.

So anyway, my foot! It feels pretty much normal! It no longer hurts at all where it did when I squeeze the first metatarsal. I’ve been catching up on work stuff today so far, so I haven’t done my workout yet, but after strength training later, I’m planning on a couple of miles of run-walk intervals, and then a short bike ride. Fingers crossed nothing hurts and I can run for real again pretty soon, especially considering Hood to Coast is now less than two weeks away.