Fat girls running

Our Irish Setter, Twilla, has started running with me in the mornings.  This is remarkable, because Twilla is notoriously, royally lazy.  And when I say "royally lazy", I mean that her favorite pastime is to lounge upon the sofa like an Egyptian princess, sleeping and glaring at us when we walk by too loudly.  She has to be ORDERED off the couch and even then, she steps down in slow motion, indicating her displeasure by her reluctance to move.  One does not rush a princess...

And because she's so indolent, she's also tubby.  Most Irish Setters are lean, lovely dogs, bright eyed and energetic, almost irritatingly so. See example 1.

  Not our Twilla! (Remember, she's not an Irish Setter, she's an Irish Sitter...) See example 2.

 When we run, she's like a tail-propelled red ottoman bouncing down the road.  A very HAPPY ottoman, but overstuffed.  I feel lean and graceful, running a quarter of a mile behind her, but I can't match her zeal for the moment...not in a million years.

She's excited about funny shaped rocks.  She points antelope droppings.  She dances around what may or may not have been a piece of a tarp strap, lying in the road.  She crashes through the weeds, waiting for me to catch up, emerging with twigs bristling, pink tongue lolling.  She dashes to the top of the butt-killing hill, watches me grinding up, then runs back down,  a portly, but enthusiastic Richard Simmons-ish personal trainer, encouraging me to kick it to the top.  Mostly because she wants her bowl of chow when we get to the house, 50 yards past the peak of the hill.

My little old grandma dog, Molly, runs with us most mornings, but it's getting to be too much for her, especially in the summer.  She and I run about the same pace, born of miles and miles of gravel traveled together.  Twilla drives her nuts, because she just magnifies how slow we really are. Neither Molly or I like to be in second place.  We always try to beat each other to the top of the hill.  It's completely discouraging to watch the red ottoman not only beat us, but come back and limp the geriatric joggers to the top.  So Molly only goes when she thinks Twilla isn't going, or when it's cool enough to frisk her up.  It's kind of sad, for me, to watch but I'm glad that I won't be without a running partner when Molly decides to retire.

Right now, 15 minutes after our run, Twilla has completely inhaled her bowl of chow (because the cats want it, you know, and we can't share a morsel) and is sacked out on the deck, trying to find the motivation to stagger to the couch to rest up for a busy morning of...well,...more sleeping.  She's shot.  Blown all her energy on 30 minutes of morning adventure.

It's a good life.