Maybell and Jack Fashion Week

Today we got little hoodies for Jack and Maybell.  You may be one of those people who think "I'd never put my dog in clothes".  If so, to you I say "Lighten up.  My dog has a pink sweater.  It's cute and hilarious."

Non-Working Sundays

I've gotten into a terrible habit of working over the weekend during the last few months and I'm trying to break myself of it.  Originally I was just trying to get a jump on the week but unfortunately I started to add work into that time-slot and as time went on it just ended up being a way that I could increase the time I had available to work.  Well, no more.

The only problem is that since I decided to stop working during the weekends I feel guilty Sunday nights, when I feel like I should be panicking.  So I've decided that instead I'm going to try to get into the habit of updating the blog and keeping in touch with my friends & family.

In terms of running I'm trying something a little different now.  My friend Adam let me borrow a book called Daniels' Running Formula.  Prior to this I'd been doing training off of Hal Higdon's website, but I'd like to increase my speed and I wasn't finding that simply jumping up from Novice programs to intermediate programs was really doing anything for me.  What I really hated was the speedwork in the Higdon program.

The great thing about the Daniels book is that he talks a lot about the physiological aspects of running, such as how the body systems respond to different training and why runners do different kinds of training.  He explains some running concepts that someone like me, who came to running as an adult, wouldn't have had an opportunity to learn.

With the help of the book I've identified that the purpose of my training now should be to be to build a base of weekly mileage that will help me get my cardiovascular systems improved and avoid injury later down the line when I start doing more challenging workouts.  At the moment I'm running about 16 miles per week.  I run 5 times a week, with a long run of 4 miles on Sunday and 3 mile runs Tues, Wed, Thurs, and Sat.  I'll be doing this for the next two weeks, after which I'll increase my mileage.  I've started to suss out my plan here if you're interested.

As far as Halloween goes the kids were both with their other parents this weekend so yesterday Jen and I headed down to the beach to have a date night.  We brought our new/old little dog Jack along with us and he was absolutely adorable on the beach - so cute.

We decided to spoil the dogs and picked up a bounty for them at Petco on the way home.  I am now officially the kind of person who has a dog that needs a coat.  And I don't care at all.

A dog park I can visit

I have a great dog, Maybell.  She's a German Shepard mutt of some sort that we got at the humane society about four years ago.  When we first got her she had a lot of behavior problems.  We've worked with her quite a bit over the last few years and she's gotten much better and has become a really close member of our family.  As I type this she's laying right here next to me, the picture of tranquility and obedience.

There are only a couple of issues we just haven't been able to work through.  The first is her aggression towards veterinarians.  She hates them.  It's like she knows how much they're overcharging me. 

She'll be friendly and warm to them when she firsts sees them but as soon as they start to poke and prod a line gets crossed that she doesn't like.  We've been through about three vets, the last of which was a vet that does home visits.  When he visited last time he casually commented "A dog doesn't necessarily need a rabies shot every single year.  Lots of times you can even skip a year.  It might even be better if we just kind of avoided visits unless there's a big problem".  Message received - I don't want to do this any more than I have to.

The other problem we haven't had terrible success in resolving is her desire to play rough with other canines at the local dog park.  She doesn't mean harm to other dogs, but she is aggressive in her play and it's caused some very uncomfortable interactions with my fellow Portland dog owners.  Usually the problems relate to other dog owners who are either a little too "Hey, it's ok.  They're dogs!  They love this kind of thing!" or "Oh my god!  My baby! My baby!  You terrible brute and your dog!"  Either extreme is not good.

So here's my proposal, Portland.  Let's open a jerk dog park.  Let's take one of the dog parks we already have and just acknowledge that all of the jerk dogs, like mine, can go there and play just as roughly as they want without the need for fear or shame on the part of any dog owner.  Your dog is playing too rough?  No problem.  I'll just walk to the other side of the park.  I get it, your dog is a jerk.  So's mine.  We're all good.