An Alternative to Triple Shot Espressos

As I mentioned, my neighbor the Parole Officer just started a new job. She loves the fact that she’s now home by three in the afternoon, hates the fact that she’s got to be at work at four a.m. It’s not so much the getting up at the crack of dawn (and, come to think of it, the crack of about the time a lot of our other neighbors are just going to bed quite often) it’s created a huge problem with her Jack Russell, Bloss.

Bloss, much like myself and absolutely like my own dog Basil, is pretty much impossible to roust from bed prior to four in the morning. I honestly believe until an alarm clock is invented that reaches out and slaps us, this is not a situation apt to change soon. Which means my neighbor needed to devise a way to get Bloss outside at a time he would consider going outside, say…somewhere after 7:00a.m.

That’s about the time Basil’s got me outside anyway, so I said sure, why not. Walking two dogs couldn’t be much more of a challenge than walking one, and I really do like Bloss. Thrilled, my neighbor quickly had a key made for me (in hindsight, probably so quickly to insure I didn’t change my mind). I was happy to see it was cut in a nice leopard print motif that wouldn’t be confused with the many other keys I pack around, a few of which, I hate to admit, I’m a little unclear as to the use for, but convinced the moment I throw them away or take them off the key ring I’ll be disastrously locked out of, or away from, something terribly important. Now Lainie’s having a key made for me and I’ve told her I won’t accept it unless it’s either a zebra or bright pink design because this whole key management thing is getting out of control.

We started the new routine a while ago and it’s actually working out well in certain respects. For one, I tend to get up earlier, finding that if we accomplish the walking before 7:00am I’m much less apt to run into any of my neighbors outside on the exact same mission and find myself caught up in early morning conversations that frankly, take up too much of my early morning. I don’t mind chatting in the summer months. Once the temperatures drop, I pretty much have to keep moving. We’ve settled into more or less of a routine that gets us out and about at 6:45am.

I said we were out, I did not say all of us were awake. Bloss certainly wakes up at the first inhalation of outside air and the first sight of grass, trees, curbing, or anything else that needs peed upon (and it all does, in his book). Basil, being more like her person, is only half-enthusiastic about the entire project. She’ll plod along for the first five minutes, stopping only to sniff, and subsequently reject, the first five or seven patches of grass she encounters. I’d say we were usually about halfway into the route when as if on cue, they both wake up to the same level, a much higher energy level than the person at the other end of the leashes, and this is the point at which I begin to question if there isn’t an easier way to be jolted awake in the morning.

Something along the lines of a triple shot espresso.

I say jolted because there’s simply no better adjective to describe being the person on the other end of two 16’ leashes, trying to control two dogs who have suddenly decided to audition for the next Iditarod and begin training immediately. Those little push button ‘leash retractors’ you pay $16 for when you buy the ‘special leash retracting leash’? A joke. A gimmick. Guaranteed to work fine when you test them out at home, absolutely guaranteed to be useless when attached to an actual dog. Add to this the hand-eye coordination required to discern, no less than fifty times in a six minute period, just which dog has crossed which other dog’s leash, and which leash should therefore be pulled either over or under the other one to untangle the bow knot you’re inadvertently creating as you try to keep up with them and keep both leashes in your hand.

Diane, in the office next to mine, swears by early morning exercise. “You have to get your heart rate up there,” she says. “It really jump starts your day.”

She’s not kidding.

By the time we get back to the courtyard, the bowknot tamed, and Bloss returned to his person’s house and the relative comfort of her sofa, my heart rate is about up there with where it is after, say, being cut off on the freeway and nearly forced into a guard rail (which happens way too much because people in this state, I’ve decided, are simply genetically predisposed against learning how to merge into traffic).

Once Basil is settled in front of The Today Show (don’t ask. Let’s just say she likes to keep up with current events and leave it at that) and I have a few moments of undisturbed peace in a very hot shower, I’m more awake than I could be had I drank maybe two of those aforementioned espressos. Also, much as I hate to admit it, I feel pretty good. Another day, I got two dogs outside without having a heart attack.

“You’re too nice,” Diane observed, when I mentioned the new routine. “I’d tell her to take care of her own dog.”

There might be something to be said for that sentiment, but I disagree on the whole ‘too nice’ thing. I know, had the dilemma of the early morning walk evolved with the neighbor with the Great Dane, I’d have said no way, absolutely not.

I say that because I haven’t really met the Great Dane yet, and I’m only on nodding acquaintance with that neighbor. Come to think of it, I’d probably better keep it that way, at least until I get a little faster at untying bowknots.