Walking A Dog

 It's a very common and simple thing to do, but for me, there's a lot more to it. When you see someone walking a dog, are they really? Or, is the dog walking them? If you look carefully, you may see what I see.  When my wife and I go out with our dog, Odin, I don't think it goes the way it's supposed to go.

Picture this: my wife is holding the leash and Odin is ahead of her and I am behind her.  We are not marching, but we could do a march.  Odin sometimes prances and he walks from one side of the road to the other and then he sometimes goes around my wife and I go around her too so we are once again are all walking the same way.  This is not walking! I spend some of the time just standing in the middle of the road, how am I getting exercise?

Dogs are very different. Odin walks on every lawn, what if I did that? He sniffs every lawn, what if I did that? He's sniffing for dogs and then he pees on many lawns? How can he do that? I know I can't do that, not that I want to.  And, then he finds the perfect lawn to make a bigger deposit on it.  How do we let dogs do this on stranger's lawns? I have no idea.  Below is a picture of Odin as he leaves another lawn he has terrorized in our neighborhood.

Who sets the pace when we take a walk? Of course, it's Odin. If I was a stranger and saw him coming, I would run the other way.  He goes up to complete strangers with his tale wagging and he's kissing them. I can't greet people that way.  And people who know Odin, they get a hug when he jumps up on them.  These people know him and have no idea who I am.

When Odin walks us at night, I am trying my best to enjoy the experience. Is it relaxing? No, it really is not. Is it fun? No, not really.  I wonder what Odin's thinking-"they need to walk a little faster, there are a lot of lawns I have to sniff here."