Straxi and I both seem to have managed to injure ourselves: I injured myself sitting on the sofa (old age is full of indignities like this) and Straxi injured herself by either eating poop or by drinking stagnant water – I’m not sure which, because she did both, and did both on the same bloody run. It’s like we are the example of How Not To Train Well or something.

I have the worst habit of…well, basically of wanting Straxi to have fun, all the time. I realize, she’s a dog – when DOESN’T she have a good time? (That’s easy: at the vet.) But essentially, even with my dog, I’m a pushover. I’m loathe to keep her on her leash when we run on our beloved trails on the college campus.

I hear poop falling in the forest…

This is great fun until Straxi discovers something disgusting or something that might bite her back. I thought she had gotten out of the habit of eating poop on the trails but apparently…not so much. However, the poop she found wasn’t on the trails at all, but was in the front yard of one of our neighbors. And to add insult to injury, she was on her leash at this point.

We had paused so she could have a sniff at a public water bowl (the folks who live in this house put out a water bowl during hot weather, which is great, I think, but generally Straxi is entirely too picky and precious to drink from a water bowl other dogs have befouled with their slobber – which is hysterical when you remember that we are talking about a dog who EATS CRAP). Her head popped up from her sniff and she had what was clearly a turd in her mouth. I was utterly grossed out (I’m gagging now as I write this – apologies. I should give this a TMI warning!) and tried to get her to drop it, but no dice.

Earlier during our run she had indeed been off leash on the trails, and she frolicked a bit in a very big puddle, and managed to drink some of it.

Either of these things could have led to her later issues – and they were exceptionally smelly issues.

Oh my god, the farts. The farts of this dog. Holy beans, Batman, it was horrible. And I don’t just mean the smell, but I could tell that the constant flatulence was painful or unpleasant to her, for sure, and that was worse for me than any of the other stuff.

This is the face of a dog who is shocked by how much her own farts stink.

Even when she woke me up at 1am so she could go outside and eat grass for half an hour – all the fallout from her poor choices (and ultimately, those choices aren’t really hers but are mine – I’m the grown up in the room, obviously. Ahem. Allegedly.) was really unpleasant and uncomfortable for her and for me.

She pooped in the house – not something she ever does, unless she’s ill. She was droopy and sad, and made it clear she felt bad. But she still wanted to run with me – which tells me that using her desire to run and enthusiasm for it as a benchmark as to how she feels, or how healthy she is is a fool’s errand. So after a couple of days of this, and it slowly becoming obvious that she was not ok, we went to the vet, who had treated her for this in the past.

$185, two types of antibiotics, some probiotics, and at least two cans of pumpkin later, I can say that she’s mostly better. She’s still not at 100%, but she’s more interested in playing and she’s more happy for sure. So when we go for our evening walks, or our runs in the morning, I have her on the head harness again (I had bought her a lovely Wonder Woman collar at PetSmart not long ago, and had moved away from the head harness) and she wasn’t especially happy about that to start with. But it gives me more ability to prevent her from eating anything, or drinking anything, for that matter, that she finds on the trail or in front of a house.

So that’s her injury – mine is almost as embarrasing, but at least it’s not gross. It’s just stupid.

I was sitting on the sofa, and Straxi’s bone was at the end of the sofa – it’s a chaise lounge type thing, so you sit on it with your feet up. Sort of like this:

That’s me, about to hurt my gluteus maximus by reclining on a sofa, vigorously.

So Straxi is at the foot end, and I bend over – sharply – towards my feet to grab her bone and throw it for her.

POP.

I heard, emanating from my left buttock, a pop. More strongly, though, I felt that pop in my left buttock. I yelped loudly and vociferously enough for Gary to come running out of the kitchen, clutching a cooking implement – possibly for protection, maybe just because he was cooking.

So I sat on an ice pack, I took Alleve, I went to see the chiro: I did all the stuff I should. It began to feel better.

I decided after my last run I should take the opportunity to trim some trees in the front yard. I had recently noticed that the tree branches were scraping the top of my car and that the sidewalk was being encroached upon by the branches as well. So obviously now is a great time to do this, right?

I grabbed the clippers and started trimming. This would have been fine, of course, had I not ALSO needed to start picking up the branches I trimmed. So I bent over, repeatedly, and hauled limbs and branches to the front of the house for pickup.

I realized after a while that I could feel a twinge. I ran 4 miles that day, without any problem at all, but suddenly, I was feeling a wee bit of pain.

I decided to ignore it and soldier on. Brilliant. By the time I was done, I was lurching down the driveway to return the clippers to the shed like Festus on the deck of a ship, wearing roller blades missing a wheel. I started to feel sort of stupid at that point.

Almost a week later, I still feel stupid. And I’m feeling stupid whilst not being able to go on a run – the worst kind of stupid.