How Much of a Walk Do You Really Need?

So all that worry and concern was for nothing. Cadie is fine; in fact it was me that ended up in bed early last night. After months of hot humid weather we finally had a good solid couple of days of rain, it started mid day on Saturday, and continued until late last night. The sky is still bleak this morning, but I did see the sun trying to peak out while I was driving in. Yesterday was the day when the whole weather situation finally caught up with me.

I’m prone to migraines and hot, humid and wet weather just does me in. Yesterday I started to feel the pain around about noon, but I’m still new at my job, and I’ve already had to call in once, so I forced myself to stick out the afternoon. I made it. I also managed to maintain verticality until after Cadie’s (truncated) walk, because I knew that she wouldn’t be able to sit still even though I wasn’t feeling well.

The problem with the walk was that it started to drizzle just as we arrived at the park. We were already there, and I knew that Cadie wouldn’t allow herself to be taken home without going to the park at all, so I gave in and took her.

Sherwood Park is shaped like a big bowl, one giant valley after another, (it even has a baseball diamond at the bottom of one of it’s valley’s. I has assumed that it was no longer being used, because the kids in the outfield would be standing on a hill, but if you get to the park about 7 o’clock you’ll see tons of little kids all wearing the same shirt and throwing baseballs back and forth, so I guess they still use it.) Normally, I toss the ball for Cadie down into the first bowl, and across the floor of the valley, then we head over to the baseball bowl where she likes to play catch for a good 20 to 30 minutes (I believe that if Cadie were a child she’d have me at baseball and soccer games every evening). After which we head into the official off-leash area, which is a nice hiking trail. We go through the trail once, about 15 minutes, and then we head up the hill to the first valley. I toss the ball across the valley floor, heading out of the park this time. Then I grab Cadie’s leash and try to pull her to the top of the bowl, where she gets a liver treat for being such a great little dog. It takes 5 to 10 minutes to get Cadie out of the park. Afterwards we head home (about 30 minutes). The whole thing takes a little more than 2 hours.

Last night though, as I said we got there just as it was starting to rain, so I took Cadie into the first bowl, toss the tennis ball and then started the fight to leave the park (it took 15 minutes last night), then we walked home, where I forced myself to stay awake.

Poor Cadie, she doesn’t understand that her mommy doesn’t feel well, so she kept trying to play, and I kept dozing off trying to relieve the pressure between my ears. Anyhow I am keeping a close eye on the weather, if it’s sunny, I might even take Cadie to the beach tonight, we’ll have a lot of pent-up energy to get rid of.