Patience Comes....

...with age apparently. This was my contemplation at 1am this morning as I lay exhausted eating ice cream. And why? Because Smokey and I survived our last stupid long run before the marathon. There's plenty more runs scheduled, they just aren't 18 miles long. We were slated to do this run on Sunday, but I discovered I was really dehydrated and didn't think a long run was a great idea. So it got bumped to Monday. Which was the first Monday of the month, and therefore also had group dog training. More on that in a second.

We started our run after 9pm, and were grateful for the really long northern summer daylight hours. But not for the flocks of mosquitos. It was still light when we finished at 12:39. We had a bet going about the finish time. I won. Therefore I get a fantastic foot massage tonight. Do you have any idea how much faster a long run goes if you talk? It's like a time warp! Almost as good as music, which you can't listen to on this race, so we stopped training with ipods. Unfortunately after three hours I find that my talking is more senseless babblings and rambling than anything coherant. Luckily so is Smokey's. We're calling it a successful survival run. And I'm buying more flavors of gu today.

Dog training went far better than I expected. Tatonka did not get his dogpark run in beforehand as Smokey had the key for the canopy and I had to stop by his work with Tatonka in the front of my truck to pick it up. Have you ever driven a small truck with a big dog in the front with you? I got some interesting looks at stoplights. Luckily he really likes to lay down in the front. Unfortunately he really likes to lay down in my lap. He prefers my window to his.

I think I finally found the secret to his obedience work. Sometimes it really is more about training the human. Just ask J-bomb, she's been trying to train me for months now. Guess what J-bomb......Tatonka likes cookies and he looks at me when I have them. I know, revolutionary! There must have been 20 dogs there last night, but he had eyes only for me. And I took another link out of his pinch collar.

We also did simple, short runaways. In the middle of a big open parking lot. I wasn't sure what Tatonka was going to do with that. We went first. And he was stellar! Toenails scraping, he shot out of the gates, scraping again as he turned around at the subject, and a nice loud bark right in front of me. What a good dog.

And now back to that patience thing. My wonderful Bear cat loves ice cream, courtesy of my mom taking care of her for a year when I was in college. And when I say like, I mean uses her claws to detour your spoon hand to her mouth. This also applies to chips and popcorn as well. Just pay the tithe, it's less painful. Last night she used a different strategy; she sat and stared at me as I ate. And licked the bowl when I was done. This, my friends, after 16 years. Perhaps there is hope for me yet.