It's a Dog's Life

or is it?!

Walking the dogs this afternoon, I lost Sid. As his eyesight and hearing gets worse, this is becoming an increasingly more common occurrence - if he doesn't see which way you've gone, he has no way of knowing which way to go.

Turning right instead of going straight across a field like we normally do, I turned round a few minutes later and he was no where to be seen. Not entirely sure where to go and look for him first, I noticed the normally docile horses in the adjoining field were picking up a bit of a pace and with a sinking feeling in my stomach saw my little old dog running for his life as they chased him up the field! He managed to escape but then shot off across another field, still at full pelt, but in completely the wrong direction to where Dougal and I were. Normally Dougal goes and finds him for me, but given that neither of us will go into the field with the horses and there was no way across the barbed wire into the other field, all I could do was stand and holler in the hope that he would hear me. Thankfully he did, but had clearly no idea which direction the noise had come from and then set off running aimlessly around trying to get some sort of orientation reference.  Now frantically waving my arms as well as shouting, on the off chance that he might be able to see something, he finally picked us up on his somewhat myopic radar and after navigating a bit of a swamp we were reunited, and both kept a bit of a closer eye on the other on the way home!

Out for a run this evening and I started to get a better appreciation of what life must be like for him.  The traffic was loud, my tinnitus was louder and for some reason I couldn't get my 'good' ear earphone to stay in my ear, consequently I spent a lot of the run struggling to hear what I wanted to.  My vision wasn't a great deal better! There are parts of our route that are fairly dark and the effect of the oncoming car headlights are to momentarily blind you so you can't see anything of the pavement in front of you as they pass. I was starting to feel a bit disorientated, when to add insult to (hopefully not) injury, my right leg decided to give way, albeit momentarily, but it threw me off my stride and I never seemed to regain it again.

Having been too cold when we set out I was now too hot, the four o'clock snack that I had devoured an our earlier was starting to make me feel sick and I had pins and needles in my hands. Obviously my energy flow was not as it should be and without it, it turned something which at times feels like the most natural thing in the world into something clumsy and laboured and slow.

With his grace, speed, reluctance to go out in the rain and desire to spend vast amounts of time curled up on the sofa I did like to think I had most in common with Dougal. But deaf, blind and with a shaky leg looks like it might be Sid!

M - 525
Brighton Half - 82
Glasgow Half - 306
Distance covered                  4.5 miles             
Total Distance covered      404.1 miles