On Saturday we took a walk along Lost Channel Road in Hastings County.  It was a ‘fitness walk’ flanked by two days of run-walk-runs and we achieved the 4.5 mph that we were hoping for.  My partner had gone for his first 10K the day before and I was really proud of him.  And envious!  Nevertheless I’m working into this slowly and I still like it.  That day the roads were slippery so I struggled to enjoy the scenery while trying to stick to the thin strips of sand that ran erratically through the ice.  I worried that I was going to slip and pull something so that I’d lose my momentum.  No time for injury.  Must get healthy.

The day looked like this and it was beautiful.  Cold, but sunny and wind-free.

The runs I’ve been doing in Toronto are around my neighbourhood of small but busy downtown streets. The country roads offered us a serene and open environment without the noise and air pollution of the city, but we ran across an unexpected challenge.  Around the corner from Toad Hall the neighbour’s dogs came out from their yard and onto the road, barking madly and looking slightly menacing.  We had to decide what tack to take.  Do we A, go all mushy and say, Come here you silly little things if you want some scratchies behind the ears, pretty little puppy-wuppies!  Or do we B, puff out our chests and yell Get lost and wave our arms aggressively?  We chose B and the dogs stayed clear of us but were suspicious of these strangely-walking strangers wearing strange clothes and behaving strangely.  It worked, which is good because no one came out of the house to rescue us so we were on our own.  I guess the dogs weren’t use to seeing human beings go past not encased in a pickup truck.

We keep our dog on our own property and she’s never out alone.  Her aggressiveness towards dogs and wild animals would make it dangerous, but it’s fairly common in the country for people to let their dogs roam untethered.  Our property is not fenced so it’s a problem for us.  Last summer three neighbourhood dogs came sauntering down our lane.  While two of them were quite friendly, the third was not and was very standoffish.  I recognized it right away but didn’t get a chance to warn my son and he did what you should never do with a strange dog.  He reached his hand up over the animal’s very large head, without letting the dog sniff the back of his hand first.  An innocent move, but the dog was not pleased and looked as though he was about to bite, leaning back on his haunches and being very still.  That he didn’t bite was surprising to me and my son was oblivious to the danger.  He was taught a lesson that day.  It just made me mad that my son was almost bitten by an off-leash dog on my own property.

Oh.  7 pounds down, BTW.  Quite pleased with the progress but still occasionally falling off the vegan wagon and onto a cheese that’s calling my name.

Will try harder this week.