Eye of the Tiger

Most of you know I have a dog. A big dog by most people’s standards—he’s a Dogue De Bordeaux or for us “Americans” a French Mastiff and being two he’s not quite up to his fighting weight, but he’s about 125 (yeah, I wish I was 125) but whatever. Anyway, Thor, that’s his name, and I walk a lot in our neighborhood and we have developed two different routes— long and short.

Thor’s pretty smart, when we are on the long route and we haven’t walked in a while, he knows the short-cuts and tries to make the turns to go home sooner. I pull him and tell him “no way mister, all the way!” and he looks at me like “really, I know you want to go home, there’s chocolate waiting for you.”

So last Friday when I got home from work I decided we’d go out of our comfort zone and leave the “compound” of our neighborhood and walk to where my son was practicing basketball at Creekside school—no more than a four mile walk at the most.

My daughter looked frightened when I told her where we were going—“bring your phone” she warned me…. “Yeah, yeah,” I replied, tucking my cell phone in my sweat pants pocket.

Thor and I leave the house and turn the opposite direction than we ever have—he looked at me like “what the heck!” Before I know it we are on the streets of Rohnert Part at night and it looks a lot different. Cars are whizzing by, the lights are so bright, Thor went from looking like a big tough Mastiff to a shaking Chihuahua. “It’s okay Thor,” I told him, “we’re good.” Honestly, I started to get a little scared myself, but for my dog, I had to stay strong.

The estimated 25 minute walk was taking much longer than I thought, so I decided it would be best to jog, I looked at Thor and stated these four little words, “Eye of the Tiger” and away we went. He never went ahead of me, or behind me, just to my side like a true partner—we jogged like we had been doing it for years, and we didn’t stop we just kept going until we got to the school—my husband said it was the adrenal, I say it’s because Thor and I are really “athletes” in the making.

Anyway, we finally made it to the school and my phone starts ringing from my panicked daughter. I don’t see my husband’s car so I call him. He tells me he’s at his brother’s house and he’ll be there shortly. I look in the gym to find my son and I don’t see him, wait I don’t see anyone I know… I call my husband back, he informs me they moved the practice to another school’s gym and it’s another three miles down the road—didn’t I know that?