Morning Runner

In the first half mile of our run, she was pulling over into the grass, stopping, and staring at me. No peeing. No squatting to poop. No movement at all, in fact: Just staring. I re-started us up. She pulled over again with a harder tug, didn't want to move.

If she is capable of regret, I imagine she felt it then, regret for sitting so eagerly by my side as I tied my new shoes in the yellow glow of our porch light, regret for being so docile as I clipped the leash to her collar.

The next night, I couldn't get her past two houses on our street before she was pulling over, stopping, and staring. After a couple of false starts, I dropped her off back at the house and ran without her for the first time in weeks. In almost two months of running with me, she'd never done that before, but we'd never started that late before, either: It was after 10:00, maybe closer to 11:00. It was cooler at the time of night, and my nephew, who was visiting for the week, was in bed, so we were free to go as long as we pleased. But she was not having any of it.

Two days later when we were scheduled to do our weekly long run, I woke up to what my half-blind, weary eyes thought was 6:58 and decided to go running since I couldn't get back to sleep. Twenty minutes into taking my three dogs out and feeding them, I looked at the kitchen clock--6:20. On a Sunday morning. I sighed, looked at Shelby and her frantically wagging tail, shrugged my shoulders, harnessed her up, and we were off for eight miles. Just as she did with our 10-mile run the weekend before, she did splendidly, pulling me up hills and toward every squirrel she saw, only stopping to go to the bathroom or gulp down some water.

She must be a morning runner, like me.