Adventures in Paradise

Track Me!

All through last week I was feeling fine. The Army Tem-Miler was fun, especially since I took it easy. One good solid run to get rid of the chest cold followed by my last long run yesterday, which I did much faster than I'd intended.

I started with a group and dropped back around mile 2 because they were going faster than I like to start, and I needed to remove the fleece I'd started with. I caught up to a pair that had stopped to do the same around mile 4 and ran the last six with one of them. We actually stopped at mile 5 when the three of us met up with the two guys they'd been running with (turns out to be a husband and a friend of the pair I ran with) and we started up again after a short rest. That's not my preferred practice because I'm always afraid that I won't get started up again after I stop moving. Still, the guys left us behind around mile 6 and one of the women dropped back shortly after that. I kept trying to slow down to keep her with us because I felt like they'd have stayed together if I hadn't joined in, but the speedier runner just kept going, so I adjusted and kept up. I did NOT plan to be running 9 minute miles, but that's what we did. Mind you, the route we ran is five miles uphill and the five miles downhill. The profile looks sort of like the Little Prince's drawing of a snake eating an elephant.

Anyway, even though I was going much faster than I'd planned, I managed to have a full-on conversation the whole time. Turns out my partner grew up a Navy brat and she was living in the Bay Area for part of the time I was living there. Her dad worked at the Naval Station that shared space with the NASA installation where my mom worked. How funny is that?

But now I'm getting butterflies. Big butterflies. I worry that I've heaped my expectations too high. I ran last year in 5 hours and 15 minutes, which is SLOW, but beat all the max allowable times by more than an hour. I want to run this race in under 5 hours, which is a 15 minute reduction in time. I beat my half marathon record by 15 minutes in September at the Navy Air Force Half Marathon, so I know I can do it - but can I sustain it for a full 26.2 miles? Argh.

Anyway - track me via this link : Runner Broadcast Service

My bib number is 13970.

So that there's not a photo-less post, here's the dog I'm currently fostering, Leo. I said I wasn't going to foster until after the race, but I'm a sucker and it's getting cold in DC, so the boarding facility we use that only has outdoor kennels is closing in the next couple of weeks. So, we need to get pups into foster.

Leo is about 40 lbs, hound mix, and as my dog walker calls him a "gentle giant". As long as he gets along with Harvey, he gets to stay.

I'm a Bad Blogger

But everyone has already figured that out. Right now I feel more over-scheduled than a high school junior who has just figured out she needs to pad her resume if she wants to get accepted to a good school. There's work, of course. That's pretty much 7:30 - 5:00 on weekdays.

Then there's volunteering - I open the community dog park twice a week, but since I do that on my morning walk, it's not really a big deal. There are, of course, the dogs themselves, since I am still fostering. My most recent pups:

Heidi was very short-term - I picked her up on Thursday afternoon and she went home with a new (pre-approved, we don't do same day adoptions,) family on Saturday afternoon. She is a big girl - about 65 lbs and needed to gain 10-15. We think Aussie mixed with a guardian dog-type like Anatolian Shepherd. Wonderful girl.

And this is Brie. She stayed with me for almost two months. Niko adored her, but then, my Niko has never met a dog he didn't like. Brie went to a home with a Stay-at-Home-Mom, a 5 year old, and a deaf canine brother - one reason she was picked is that she's so good at coming when called that she cues her new brother to come - when you live on a four acre farm, that's important! (Also, does that sound like the greatest life ever for a high energy dog, or what?)

I'm foster dog free for the moment, because there's the non-volunteer aspects of my life taking precedence right now. For one thing, the Marine Corps Marathon is ten(!) days away.

 

 The weekend of my longest scheduled run was, predictably, while I was supposed to be away on travel. So, I made the best of it and ran 21 miles along Sydney Harbor. (This was a work trip, did I mention that my life, busy as it is, does not suck?) For real, I could retire to Australia.

Last weekend was the Army Ten Miler, which I did with a cold I caught in Australia, and so was not the best 10 miler I've had. But that's okay, because I'm supposed to be backing down a little. This Sunday is a 12 mile run, and then the big one. And ten weeks after that (give or take)...the Goofy Challenge at Disney World. That would be a half marathon on Saturday followed by the full marathon on Sunday. No, I don't know why I thought this was a good idea either.

There's trapeze (and other circus fitness stuff), Zip Zap Circus (more volunteering), travel and yeah... I need a vacation. Knitting - did a bunch on the multiple-day spanning airline trips but it was hours of stockinette in 4 ply yarn, so there's actually not much to show for it. I'm starting to think this may need to become a non-knitting blog if it's going to stay in business. For instance, I take some really cool pics when I run...

 

Another Day, Another Pup

This is Cricket the hound.

I was waiting for a different dog to foster. Bumble the cattle dog is Niko's mirror image - he's got the same white body with black spots, but his big black spot is on his right side, and he has a tail. Apparently he's also just a skittish as Niko, so I was going to work with him. But this girl came up a week before Bumble, who doesn't get here until the end of this week.

She came up from North Caroline with two of her siblings, who were getting along just fine at the doggie daycare that hosts many of the city's rescue dogs. Cricket wasn't getting along fine though. She huddled in a corner and wouldn't come out, and when leashed she'd just hunker down and refuse to go anywhere. She was just terrified. How could I not bring her home and give her some rest?

It turns out that's all she needed to blossom into a sweet, loving pup with a little bit of confidence. She started at my house huddled in the crate and refusing to go anywhere. By the time I got home this afternoon, she was bouncing up to the door to greet me with a full body wiggle and vocalizations. She is even playing with Niko a little, pretty much entirely on her terms. She's great with Harvey, too - just interested enough to say hello but not enough to give chase. She's supposed to meet a potential family this week, and I so hope they connect. She needs a person of her own.

New Addition

I mentioned that dogs were taking over my life, right?

When I brought Niko home, it was supposed to be just until we got him checked out by the vet, because we'd noticed his right leg didn't bend the way it should. That was the week before the Marine Corps Marathon, and my plan was to board him for the day of the race and pick him up the next day, assuming I could walk. But the day before the marathon, we were at an adoption event and another dog bumped into Niko at just the right angle and broke his leg - for what turned out to be the second time.

We did some fundraising and got him fixed. Three months of rehab and he was cleared for full activity and adoption, but I just couldn't give him up. And he wasn't really interested in other people (still isn't, actually). But that experience has made me the go-to person for this little guy:

This is Rabbit, one of the dogs rescued from the shelter right before Easter. He was limping, so they took him to a vet and it looks like he's got some similar old injuries. Probably from getting hit by a car and left on the road. So, he's hanging with me for now. We'll get him to a specialty vet and see if we can fix him up and find him a home.

The dogs get along great, although Niko is mugh higher energy than Rabbit, and is once again playing the role of pesky little brother. Even better, Rabbit doesn't chase Harvey, so he'll be a great candidate to go to a home that has cats. He's a gentle, snuggly, pup and while having him complicates my daily life, I'm so glad to be part of the team that is helping give him a new life.

Oh Dear

So the last you saw my foster pups, the cute little Niko was hanging out, looking adorable on the new lime green couch and learning to climb the stairs. Now, he's still lounging on the couch (on a pink towel, placed not so much to deal with pet hair as to deal with my nasty post-run body before I make it to the shower,) but less happily. His right rear leg looked like it had a old injury or maybe a congenital issue, but he still ran around the park like a little crazy dog. Things went awry on Saturday, just hours before I'd planned to send him to doggie daycare for the weekend so he wouldn't have to be crated while  I ran.

It turns out that the boy's leg was in such a precarious state that a little bump from another dog was enough to fracture a growth plate in his tibia. All we knew was that he was hurting, so instead of couch-potatoing as I'd planned on Saturday, we went to the vet. Got some painkillers and a referal to an orthopedic clinic. The rescue director brought him to the ortho on Wednesday. Final diagnosis - old fracture of the femur that healed poorly and resulted in a ruptured ligament and floating kneecap. That caused instability that led to a tiny little bump causing his tibia to break with just a gentle bump.

This is what his normal leg looks like:

and his right leg:

You can see both old and new breaks as well as the kneecap displacement. Poor little guy had probably been covering up a lot of pain before this. In a sense, it's good that this happened now, so that we can be sure he gets the treatment he needs. So far, this has cost in the range of $600 between me and the rescue (I'm considering paying the vet bills for the visits I take him on as my contribution to the fundraising) and we're working every angle we can for fundraising. I'm even learning about grants. The most helpful thing has been crowdfunding through our You Caring page. We're hoping to get his surgery done next week while I'm doing some traveling so that he can do his initial recovery with the rescue director and then come to me until he's able to be put up for adoption.

All of this and the boy is only about 8 months old!

Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to show you pictures of me in front of the Iwo Jima Memorial with a finisher's medal and a grin on my face.

More Excuses...

I didn't mean to drop so completely offline again, really. It's been a long couple of months since I went back to work.

First, I found a lump in my left breast and while I wasn't too concerned (size, shape, and family history told me cyst or fibroid), I still made an appointment for a mammogram. All went well until they came back asking for more pictures...of the other breast. That freaked me out a bit, but in the end, all is well.

Then in one weekend, I did a 16 mile run on Saturday, drove up to Penn State on Sunday to commission one of my former Sailors, and after that, flew to Newport, RI to attend the funeral of my second CO. On the way home, with my friend and former boss from that ship watched the events at the Navy Yard unfold in real time. I checked Facebook and e-mail looking for updates from the dozens of friends who work at the Yard, and particularly those who worked in Building 197. While all of my close friends were safe, one of my acquantainces was killed. Returning home was eerie, because so much of the city in the area was still closed - I live within walking distance of the Navy Yard and the shooter's hotel is about a block away from my home.

So that was a rollercoaster of a weekend. The White House/Capitol Hill car incident and the guy who set himself on fire in front of the Air and Space Museum all happened within blocks of my home and on one of my regular running routes. In fact, the self-immolation thing happened about three hours after I finished my 20 mile run, which happened to have passed that exact spot four times as I ran laps around the Mall. It's DC and it's been fundamentally crazy, as everyone in the country and world have (re)discovered recently.

And then there's the dogs...Austin went to his forever home and his new family tells me they can't imagine life without him. Then I got Paca, another lovely border collie mix. She and Harvey were fast friends, even playing with each other happily. She went to her forever home last week and I brought home Osita.

Happy, beautiful girl. Who wants to eat cats. Not cool. So she's looking for another foster AND/OR a forever home without cats or small dogs. And a job. We're working on that.

So I brought home Niko, who has been much more kitty friendly.

(Also, there's a new, lime green couch. At 90 inches, it is long enough for the Brown Shoe to lay full length. And it looks good against my purple wall.) Niko is a little bit lame, with a bad right rear leg. Maybe an old, poorly healed break or maybe it's congenital, but the muscle is atrophied and it doesn't bend much. The first few days were rough with all the stairs in my house, but it only took a day and a half (with a little coaxing) to climb the stairs by himself. Now he races me up the stairs and jumps onto the bed and couch without invitation. The next big task is down the stairs, which he does, but only reluctantly.

And then there's the running - but I'll save that for later. Assuming I survive Sunday.

If you want to track me, you can go here and use the bib number.

 

Five More Minutes

I've got to say that this thing where I have a real job again after more than a year is really cutting into my social life. I have to drop the dog(s) off at daycare at 6:30 in order to get to the office in time for 7:30 meetings, and even leaving at 5 means that I don't get home until 5:30 at best. If I'm doing a track work out (once a week) or circus stuff (2-3) times a week, that means my days are jammed until about 10:30 or so. Saturdays are long runs (16 miles this Saturday...longest I've ever run) with Team in Training (still time to donate!) and the dog adoption event, so Saturdays are full from 6:45am through 3pm. Sundays are my only sleep-in days, and someone else thinks Saturday should be, too.

He moved into my spot when I hauled myself out of bed and went into the other room.

I am loving the marathon training, but I really need to get a better balance to my life. November...

Works in Progress

On Monday my boy Austin went to the Vet, because he had ongoing tummy troubles that were just not solved by a bland diet of chicken and rice. No pepto or anything helped for long and he's so skinny that I've been worried, and so has the head of the rescue. So...along with a bag of poop, off he went. Got the verdict back today - he's allergic to chicken. So the doggie daycare's house food, which is a wonderful chicken-and-rice based food was making him sick. And I made it worse by taking all the other stuff out and giving him straight up chicken breasts twice a day.

My poor, poor, boy. Anyway, he's on a beef-based diet now and anything chicken-based is segregated. Now, we wait to see if he gains a little weight. So that's the first work in progress at my house.

Second is the ongoing marathon training, for which I attended my first track workout today. My Map my Run pictures often inspire jealousy from my non-DC Facebook friends, with tracks around the Tidal Basin, past monuments and memorials, and along the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers. Today's, not so much...

Yup...3.5 miles of circles. It was interval training and I know it's good for me, but ugh. The good news is that one of the women I run with on long runs once in a while was there and we have similar paces, so we ran the whole thing together.

And finally, there's a hat. It's the same KoolHaas I worked on in San Diego, but in a different color and with an extra repeat.  I reported to my job at the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Monday (J-5, if you're really interested), and was down getting some lunch in one of the food courts when I noticed a group of women and had to double take. Three women about my rank, in uniform, and two civilians, sitting around and knitting. Yes, I managed to find an actual knitting group in the Pentagon on my first day back there. How crazy is that? So between the metro time and this group, you may well be seeing more knitting stuff up here.

Harvey the Two Faced Cat

Most of the time, my Harvey is a sweet, loving boy with a habit of lounging somewhere near me.

As he is here. Or is he really just lounging around? Austin would disagree, as seconds later, my sweet kitty boy looked more like this:

He's always thought dog tails make excellent toys. Poor pup had no idea what was happening. But Harv is such a scaredy-cat that he took off as soon as Austin turned around and stepped towards the chair. It was playful and not an attack, so I just let them work it out while I took pictures. That makes me a bad foster mom, probably.

Some really good news is that we got an adoption application on Austin this week and he'll be going to meet his prospective family on Saturday. Yay!

I don't know if everyone could see the link since I went through Facebook...here's a You Tube link to our Zorbing adventure that should work. My adventure on Sunday was a 14.8 mile run that took me around the National War College, Hain's Point, up the Mt. Vernon Trail towards Roosevelt Island, past the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Monument, WWI and WWII Memorials, and the Washington Monument. (And a bunch of gov't buildings including the backsides of a few Smithsonian buildings). I love it that this place is within a mile of the city center.

Meet Austin

You knew I wouldn't last long, right? And Rural Dog Rescue needs fosters, so I brought this little dude home for a trial.(For those so inclined, they also need donations...they're treating 8 heartworm positive dogs right now!)

Austin is a young, but full grown (maybe 1-2 years old) shepherd mix. He's small, about 35 pounds, which puts him ten pounds lighter than Tipper. He also has some tummy troubles, so he needs to gain about five pounds once we get those fixed.

I wasn't sure it was going to work, but he learned pretty quickly that chasing the kitty will get him flopped onto his back. For a dominant dog, that wasn't fun. His leash walking manners were pretty rotten, too. thankfully, he's a very smart boy and after two walks he figured out that I was serious about walking nicely.

He is adorable and so sweet. He'd realy like to be a lap dog, but I've been teaching him to stay off the furniture. People here in DC can be stuffy about allowing animals on the furniture, so I figure it's safer to keep them off (at least while I'm around) and a new family can decide to let him up on the sofa.

So, the goals with Austin are to fix his tummy, keep him well-behaved on the leash, and work on basic obedience. (He's good with sit, but not so much with down or come.) I don't need to teach him to entertain himself, he's got that bit down pat.