Hi all! Man, I have REALLY neglected this blog, sorry about that. Life got very crazy for a good while: I graduated from school (yay!), we moved from FL back to WV (double yay!), I studied like mad and finally passed my national vet tech exam (HUGE yay!), we moved from the crappy little apartment we started in to a lovely house in the country (yay for the house, boo that the yard would be perfect if only it were fenced), and now I’m going back to school in the spring to work on a bachelors degree and hopefully become a wildlife rehabilitator. Whew! But I’m starting something now that Katy is involved in, so I wanted to share it on her blog with all you great folks.
I am not kidding when I tell you I am grossly overweight. I’m also nearly 36 years old and pre-diabetic. For these and other reasons I’ve started a bit of a fitness program. Nothing exceptional, just eating better and getting out and walking a few miles a couple days a week. I’m horribly out of shape so I’m starting slow. Well, my husband thought it would be fun to do a couch to 5k program together. Bear in mind he’s MUCH thinner than me, though he’s got bad knees, and he has previous running experience. I generally do not run because way too much of me jiggles and it gets painful. But I thought, eh, I can at least try, right? So I was looking for a “target” 5k, something to aim for when our program would be about done, and I came across a local 5k run/walk in October called the Canine Classic. Of course I was intrigued. It’s put on every year (this will be the 6th) by a young adult professionals’ group and people are encouraged to bring their four-legged friends. Hmm, well how about 3-legged? 🙂 Suffice it to say, I think it would be just fantastic to bring Katy for this 5k, show em what tripawds can do!
So Katy and I are in training. I’ve been a bit neglectful about keeping her in shape, so I took her for a “baseline” walk this morning just to see how she handled things. As usual she amazed me. We ended up walking a bit over a mile, took it nice and slow with plenty of pauses and a longer water break at the halfway point. She would have gone farther for my sake, she’s mama’s girl, but I didn’t want to push her. In fact I didn’t intend to walk as far as we did, I didn’t even realize the distance until we got back to the car and I checked my MapMyWalk app. But she did great. I’m just a bit concerned about the muscles in her remaining front leg, her hind legs are very strong but her front leg less so, so I’ll need to do strengthening exercises with her in addition to walks. She is 10 years old, I don’t expect her to be the ultimate canine athlete any more than I expect to look like Kate Moss. But we can both be better than we are now, and we’re going to get better together. 🙂 Wish us luck!