Bo-Bo Knows the Joys of Exercise

The smile you see above—yes, dogs smile—is the expression that bubbles up when Bo’s anticipating the company of adoring fans, enjoying an extended walk, or running. This particular smile was the result of an off-leash, crazy-eight dash Bo-Bo enjoyed in a fenced-in playground down the street from where we live.

A quick disclaimer about the photo—This isn’t the best picture I’ve ever taken, but you try capturing a perfect photo when the dog you’re trying to shoot is running like a drunk at 40 miles an hour. Whatever National Geographic pays its photographers to capture endangered squirrels-in-flight is not enough. Even with a beast as stupidly submissive as Bo, capturing the photo I want is really a game of patience (waiting while he mopes about), cunning (figuring out the exact moment he’s gonna snap his head down, fold his body in two, and take off), and skill (I got nine pictures of blurry Bo butt for every one picture of the smile I was after).

So anyway, when Bo-Bo runs, he smiles the tongue-lolling smile of a goofy bastard who's focused on nothing but the happy-go-lucky perfection of the present moment. Clearly, he's a nut. Running’s that thing I did once in a mad panic to flee the eerily moonlit woods that my 10-year-old brain—freshly warped by a marathon reading of “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”— convinced me was haunted. Running’s that hurdle my volleyball coaches forced my teams to clear before we could get to the business of practicing with an actual ball. Running’s the supposedly good-for-me exercise that makes my lungs burn in a way that feels about as healthy as breathing next to a chain smoker. Running has made me feel a lot of things, but joy is certainly not one of them.

Not, so for Bo-Bo.

But then again, Bo’s built for this, right? Greyhounds have lungs giant enough to accommodate all the extra air they need to run, hearts strong enough to slam that air to their giant, oxygen-hogging muscles, and spines so flexible that they can fold up when they run only to leap in mid air and fold up again just in time to land (the one time Bo-Bo ran in sand, the tracks he left behind looked like the trail of a giant kid hopping on a pogo stick). My body, on the other hand, is best suited to curl up with a book and lose myself in an imaginary world. Or better yet, camp out in front of a computer and create those imaginary worlds myself.

And while I’m sure that Bo-Bo loses no sleep over the fact that I have a richer imagination than he does, I can’t help but envy him his exercise-induced ecstasy. Bo loves running, so when given the chance, he’s happy to make his drunken dash under the slide, around the sandbox, and back again and again and again. Bo loves walking, so when I take him out, he struts at the end of a leash, his smile wider than the tracks he raced on before we rescued him. In fact, Bo loves walking so much that on days I’m taking my sweet time getting him out the door, he’ll remind me by quietly poking his nose into my breakfast; he only graduates to a tentative bark when it's clear I've moved on from reading while I finish my breakfast to just plain reading. And you should hear the alarm that boy sounds when I have the audacity to sit down at my computer to answer an email or two (though to be fair Bo generally sits at my feet while I write, so he knows all that click-click-clicking means he’s gonna get ignored for a while—barking’s the only sure-fire way to make sure his walk comes before the keyboard claims another morning).

Maybe it’s not the joy of exercise that I envy. I’ll never be much of a runner, but I have come to love walking Bo daily; I’ve even been known to laugh as I try chasing him during his sprints. In the 14 months we’ve had him, Bo’s helped me realize that walking brightens my day as much as it brightens his—so that’s a big something he’s already transferred. But I do envy his focus:

Bo walk? Walk Bo? Walk Bo now? Walk! Walk! Walk!

He loves it. He wants it. No excuses.

But what about me? As a human, I’m the one with the higher order thinking skills. For example, I’m the one who holds Bo back when he wants to traipse into oncoming traffic. I’m the one who can trace a particularly terrible bout of diarrhea back to Bo’s cherished, but apparently toxic new treats. I’m the one who can tell the difference between a plastic bag skittering in the street and Bo’s new best friend. And yet, as important as writing is to me—and I’d have to say it’s at least as important as Bo’s daily constitutional is to him—I don’t always put it first.

And why is that?

It’s not like I’m some dumb (but loveable) animal who needs to wait for someone else to open the door and let me play. My time is mine. My computer is always on. My ideas are always waiting for me to pick them up and play with them. And yet, every once in a while, I catch myself sitting around and hope, hope, hoping today’s the day some leash-wielding someone will give me the command: Sit. Write. Good girl.

At least on those rare days when Bo doesn’t get to go for a walk—they’ve been few, I swear—he can blame me. I guess we have that in common, Bo and I. When I fool myself into believing that work schedules, wedding plans, or socializing are acceptable excuses for preempting my writing, I’ve really got no one to blame but me.