Oscar Went Running.

Now. I'm going to have to do some serious catching up with this blog. It has fallen by the way-side a due to a lack of time. Firstly caused by the subject of the blog - the furry terror that is Oscar the Sprocker - and secondly caused by Dreaded Work. I have been posting rather prolifically about Oscar on a Dog Forum though, so I will try to copy and paste all my relevent posts from there to get caught up!

However, I had to blog now because Oscar went for his first run yesterday!

It was a bit naughty really, you are supposed to wait until they are a year old until you do "forced" running with them. Bones and joints growing and things like that. But he came back from a half-hour off-lead romp and was still doing mad laps of the house. We have moved house in the last week and the new house has a lot better scope for mad laps than the old one and he was getting some serious speed up. I was planning on just a two mile slow run round the new block and since Oscar runs and runs and runs when we take him out for walks anyway we thought it wouldn't do too much harm to take him out for another 20 minutes. He's 7 months old now and we are aiming for 45 minutes ish a day walking with him.

Anyway, justifying myself aside, we decided that Oscar was going to come out for his first ever run with me and the OH. Harness on, bungi lead attached, thinking in the back of my mind that a 7 month old Spaniel on a piece of elastic fastened around your waist whilst moving at a speed faster than a careful walk is probably a recipe for disaster. I let OH take him to start with.

Turns out Oscar must have done Cani-X in a previous life. He set off in front at a good steady trot with a steady tension in the lead and looked like a perfectly well-behaved dog for 2.3 miles. I took over being towed by him about half way round. I was suprised how A. comfotable the waist strap was and B. how much added speed there was. I'm not sure how much of that was psychological but we zoomed round the run today!

It was really fun! Going out running as a little family. Oscar seemed to really enjoy it and was quite knackered when we got back. That lasted about an hour before he started on his usual antics - but he's quite tired today! I think we'll resist running with him more than once a week for a long while yet, and certainly not much further than the 2 miles we did today. But it was a lovely start.

xxx