The Potential for a Walk

There were many things I used to enjoy when I was alone. Alone? Not really. Hardy was always there by my side. I can remember times before Hardy (BH) when I enjoyed things like meditation, cooking, gardening, cycling (both bi and motor), reading, writing, watching a movie or a rerun of The West Wing, and of course walking. All of those things I can still do today, not that I feel much motivation to do so, but I’m able – all except for walking.

I try to fit in a bit of exercise every day. Even if I only do floor exercises indoors, I try to get in a little something. My doctor said it would help bring up my mood (endorphins) if I did it in the morning, so that’s my goal. I don’t always succeed, but I try. With Hardy it was easy. There was always the opportunity for a walk looming out in the future. Now I can’t go walking – and I won’t even try.

Hardy was so cute when we went for a walk. He was a typical Schnauzer, very obedient and well mannered, but he just had to linger, for the scent of things. After he learned how to walk exceptionally well on a lead, I ended up getting a flexi-leash, because… well, because… Hardy was a Schnauzer.

Ultimately I knew he wanted to do what he was bred to do: smell stuff. In the end, he had the skills, and the Schnauzer sniff, down to faultless precision, synched up with our walking. I used to marvel at how perfect a pet he was for me, both of us wanting to walk briskly at all times. He was longing to linger just long enough for the flexi to be at full extension. I was walking without so much as a hiccup of a stop to wait for him. Then he would motivate to the next bush about ten feet ahead of me, and he would luxuriously inhale again. He even had a signal for me to know when he meant serious business - he would do figure eights in one place until he found just the right spot. Then we were off again without a worry in the world.

A line from The West Wing characterizes a Schnauzer perfectly - during a scene when the press secretary was prepping the president’s daughter about an interview with an expert reporter. The press secretary (CJ) wanted to illustrate how the reporter would wait ever so patiently for an extremely personal disclosure. “If you don’t answer she’ll just wait like an infinitely forgiving, infinitely compassionate cross between the Virgin Mary and a Schnauzer,” was the line (season five, episode seven).

That’s how it was living with a Schnauzer. Yet, sometimes I would get the feeling that I was keeping him from doing something grand. I would be writing, or reading, or watching something on TV, and he would sigh long and loud, as if to say, “Are we ever going to do something?” Because he knew there was an answer. There was always the potential for that lovely walk on the trail somewhere in the future.