Chasing the Monster

 Last year Booker raced the Lake Monster 12K with me.  

I wasn't sure about this year because the forecast called for pouring rain and I was debating in my head whether I should force him to the same torture that I was about to endure.

When I woke up this morning it was lightly raining and the forecast assured me that the rain was headed out right before the race was to start.

And it was a cool 53 degrees, so I knew he would be fine.



So we loaded up and headed over to the race start. 

Booker started the race - as I knew he would - wound up and wanting to sprint as fast as he could.  So the beginning was a fight to keep him next to me.


You can see me holding him back in this pic.

Given his history of pooping as soon as we start running, I took him to the back part of the race lot and desperately tried to get him to poop.  No luck and sure enough, about 1/2 mile in he pulled over to poop.  Fortunately, I have trained him to go off to the side and he pooped next to some woods.  It only cost us about 15 seconds.

We started in the back and passed several people as I gave them a wide berth, but Booker was on his best behavior with no problems at all.

A couple of pics from about 3 miles in.  He takes a way better race photo than me and is a total ham!!





For much of the race we were by ourselves and he trotted along side me.  He looked over every time someone from a house cheered us on.  Someone had set up a bubble machine so there were foamy bubbles across our path at one point, which didn't phase him in the least!

I was burning out towards the end, but I didn't want to walk and Booker moved ahead of me looking back like "Let's go!"

We finished at almost the exact same time as last year!


Marc was on the side and caught our finish on video.


I was first in my age group.


Booker was extremely well behaved all things considered.

One other guy was running with his German Shepherd who kept trying to charge Booker (I don't think he was aggressive but you never know and his owner was clearly frustrated with him continuing to try to run at Booker).  This distracted him a few times but was easily redirected.

I was thrilled at the number of people who came over to meet him, talk to him and pet him and mentioned how well behaved he was (and expressed amazement that he ran the 12K with me!) - he was even completely polite and calm with little kids who came running over.

All in all, a great day despite the weather and my VERY wet feet,

The only downer of the day was leaving Sisko home alone.  But he's getting to that age where a 12K race is just too much.  He got plenty of love when we got home!

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