Walking the Dog

Those of you who read American newspapers might be aware that there is a whooping cough epidemic in California. According to the Bay Area Daily News, as of August 31, the state had reported 3,600 cases of whooping cough, the most since 1958 and a sevenfold increase over last year.

My girls and I have been part of the whooping cough epidemic. Deep Thought is in week seven, I am in week 5 and Little Starlet is in week 4. It's lovely - not.

Anyway, without going into the gory details, the result from my perspective is that I am rather breathless all the time. My doctor has prescribed an asthma inhaler, which doesn't do much though helps a little at night time. This has somewhat limited my ability to do exercise. For example, our Scottish Dance class started last night but I didn't even attempt to join in.

Ruby and I go for a walk two or three times a day. She is as pooped out by our walks as I am. Quite often she will flop down into a bit of shade while we are walking along, as if to say "That's it, I'm done, carry me home." We mostly walk for 20-40 minutes, though this morning we spent 50 minutes walking at the Palo Alto Baylands, finishing before 10am when it starts to get hot.

The thing that is really starting to annoy me is the unleashed dogs everywhere. At Hoover Park, behind Little Starlet's school, there is a bunch of dog owners every morning who have their dogs off the leash. At Pardee Park, our local destination park, there is usually at least one dog off the leash every time we go. Today there were two dogs off the leash on our street. The issue is that Ruby doesn't much care for dogs. She doesn't like being bounced or crowded, and she objects to being sniffed. So she tends to growl when other dogs get too close. This isn't a problem when the other dogs are on the leash too, but can be tricky if they aren't. We've not had any significant issues yet, but I suspect it may be a matter of time. For now I'm using the command "leave it" to try to discourage her from growling (and also from chasing squirrels).

I weighed Ruby on the scales today and it said she was 18.4 lbs. I'm not telling you how heavy I am.