Walking The Dog

Every morning the first thing I do is take Oscar, an eight pound, six-inch tall, long-haired mini dachshund out for a walk. We go to the “windy park,” which is really just a small patch of grass in an office building plaza two blocks away. The walk to the windy park and back is roughly a quarter mile. I do this every morning, every evening and usually a few times in between, depending on my and Oscar’s schedules. (Oscar has a farm to which he goes twice per week outside the city to run around with other dogs.) All told, I probably walk him about 2-3 times per day, seven days a week.

Let’s be conservative and say I walk him 2.67 times per day, six days per week. (Heather walks him about a quarter of the time, and our nearly 11-YO daughter Sasha, who coined “windy park,” does it, say, 1.5 times per week, but only after expressing emotions ranging from huge fuss to apocalyptic tantrum. This despite her being the one who forced us to get a dog via incessant begging and guilt-tripping two and a half years ago.)

If we do the math 2.67 times 6 = 16 trips per week, each of which is a quarter mile, meaning I do four miles per week of dog walking, not including the two flights of stairs in our walkup. Four miles per week for two and a half years (let’s make it two since we leave him with a dog sitter for a month in the summer) is roughly 100 weeks. That means I’ve done 400 extra walking miles and 3200 flights of stairs both up and down solely on account of Oscar.

In exchange, I’ve gotten fresh air, exercise, awkward forced socializing with other dog owners, often in a foreign language I only partially understand and a level of naive affection and loyalty of which humans are incapable past age eight.

On balance, it’s a good deal.