Now what? It’s two days after Steamtown. Boston is Monday (Monday?), April 18. The earliest I can apply is Monday. And despite my aching feet, I will. Will, it seems, is the operative word.
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K found Thurber (see right!), a mahogany-colored bloodhound mix, on Petfinder.com. For as long as she can remember, she’s wanted a bloodhound. As a child, two of her favorite books were on sharks and “The Right Dog for You: Choosing a Breed That Matches Your Personality, Family and Lifestyle.” Sharks weren’t an option, and a Bichon, Snowball, adopted us at a Manhattan pet store, and he was the sweetest family dog for eighteen years. But the dog book said bloodhounds are loyal but not needy, which is just like me, little K said. I’d love to have a bloodhound.
Little K named Snowball, and K came up with Thurber. She’s a fine cartoonist herself, and a fan of the line drawings of James Thurber, the wicked satire of Charles Addams. The picture of Thurber at Petfinder won us over. He was only three months old, and his mother, Scarlet, a sixty-pounder, but K was certain, and pretty much right away, so was I. M joined our pack, we did an online application and a week later we brought home our second dog, James Thurber O’Connor Morris. (Thanks, J!)
Own a dog in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and fall down a rabbit hole. M says it is as if we can see the green wriggly antennas of the dog-people and the can see ours; it’s a fourth dimension thing (so don’t look for them in pictures.)
Run a marathon and make a change. Don’t rush back into training. (Particularly if you are in a relationship!) Exercise a different part of your body, mind and spirit. Take a sketch class, reconnect with an old friend, plan a trip, throw out half of what’s in the closet, replace your bed mattress, get Skype and start calling overseas friends, make a weekly plan to talk and stick to it, half-English, half-Spanish, or whatever language it is you have a passing knowledge. Resubscribe to a newspaper. Live in a technology-free zone (start with a weekend a month, and, if your job doesn’t BlackBerry-leash you, build on that.)
Training has eaten a big hole that should be filled with something new to bring your life back to balance. Yeah, I run for my life, but as I’ve tried to stress here, I’ve been able to keep this up for 34 years because I believe in balance. When it comes to a happy running lifestyle, balance is everything.
Thurber’s my change. He joined me on my first run after the marathon. Bloodhounds will pick up the scent of a man and follow him for a hundred miles. When M told our friend B that she didn’t have to worry about me leaving her now, that Thurber would track me down, B said, deadpan, “Why don’t you just get L a cell phone.”
(He’ll get big. Anecdote:
“Wow, look at the size of those paws!” a young woman says one morning in Prospect Park.
Her companion – a human – is a few steps behind him.
“I know. People say that.”
Her man friend is now also staring down Thurb’s long legs.
“No, really,” he says. “Big”
I hear the sound first. Like thunder, and up gallops a pony-size Great Dane.
“Just a year,” they say.)
I don’t know how Thurber would be on a manhunt, but on a run, he’s sweet. Only four months now, and he takes to a loose lead, especially at a run. At first, my body protests, quads and slight shin splint on the right leg. But my bad leg feels good, and Thurber, loping, his ears dangling down his side, looks all the world like he’s on a fox hunt, nose up in the fresh autumn air. Not out for squirrels, not showing interest in other dogs, and as we pick up the pace, I’m feeling a rhythm return, my feet for now feeling no pain, and Thurber, he doesn’t seem to have that Tony Curtis-Sidney Poitier (“The Defiant Ones”) all-business way about him, he’s just into it, into the run, because like me, he was born to it. And I think I like this change. I’m running Boston, but I won’t be doing any hard training for awhile. When I run it will be with Thurber.
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I might be taking a break from my twice-weekly posts. But keep me on your favorites. There is a lot more to say about Running for Your Life. In my life I have rarely quite felt the way I do now about there being so much more to say.
Next: Running for Your Life: Travel days
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