Leader of the Pack

Now that the weather is finally starting to resemble spring we've been able to add walking the dogs back to our daily repertoire. I was talking to Kevin last week about his recent dog-sitting experience and I told him that he should go out and take the dogs for a walk, that it would be good for him, calming. Aren't people who share their lives with pets supposed to benefit so much health-wise? Then I started thinking about our walks and realized it is nothing remotely close to relaxing. It is the exact opposite of that.

I don't even know if the dogs enjoy the walks because Ginger never gets to sniff as much stuff as she wants to and Mango spends the whole time trying to get ahead of whoever is in front of her. At first we thought it was cute that Mango would bark and go crazy when Jacob ran ahead yelling, "You can't catch me!" We thought she was being protective of him or something. Yeah right. She just wants to be the leader of the pack. And poor Ginger is back there getting dragged along...all she wants to do is sniff the life out of every itty, bitty thing we pass. Is that so much to ask? Yes. It's call a walk for a reason, not a 'stand'.

It sucks when there are two adults, thus one for each dog leash, but it sucks even more when it's just me. The leashes cross, I get all tangled, Mango repeatedly jumps Ginger. I really do look like one of those moronic people you see all twisted up and bow-legged and having the blood circulation to my legs cut off from being bound in dog leash. I do the stupid little half-turn, leg lift, rotate back, twisty arm thing every 30 seconds. The other day I'd had enough of the 'not taking pictures' thing so I brought the camera along and by the grace of God, it did not break. And I'm sure deep-down I do find some pleasure in those walks.