K9 Kamp Challenge I: "Walking on Sunshine" or "Dragging Foley on Pavement"

We have successfully completed our walking on sunshine task but not without a few problems.

Daddy and I were getting ready. He pulled on his training pants, his tube socks, his sneakers. I licked my pads to make sure there were no obstructions and was ready to go. Mommy then interrupted us. She said words I dreaded to hear: Why don’t you take Foley along.

Geesh. Here I am. Four years old, in the prime of my prime, I am ready for my challenge, and not only do I have to drag tubby Daddy but now I got the Betty White of Yorkies to drag along. If we were going to win this challenge it came down to me: Pocket Dog. And I am never more worried than when things came down to me.

So we started our walk. Daddy used a purposeful stride. I walked with pride next to him. Foley dug in her paws and use her low center of gravity to imitate a turtle wearing a leash. If I may suggest to my K9 Kamp Kreating friends, that next year they add the stubborn Diva Yorkie drag challenge.

This lasted until our little modular home cottage disappeared from view. This was, like on all walks, when Foley gave in. Daddy says it’s because she knows she’s going for a walk. I think it’s because she’s not smart enough to know she can just turn around and thinks she has to take that long walk to go home again. But don’t tell her that because she will definitely give me a butt nip if she hears about it.

There is also one problem with this challenge. It’s the problem with almost every challenge we do. Many of us dogs are inside dogs, and when we go outside, and for a walk, well while we are in nature, nature calls. And it is very embarrassing in the middle of a challenge. Really, you humans don’t know how difficult it is. Imagine this. “Here we are at the Olympic gold medal 100 meter dash, and we’re off, and Bolt has a huge lead, but no, he’s taken a giant crap in the middle of the track and cost himself the Gold.” That is our life.

But the good thing is, once you have an early walk cleaning out, it gives you quite the skip in your step. Unfortunately Foley is a sniffaholic so we could never build up a healthy head of speed before something caught her scent and she had buried her nose in it. But once Foley was scentually satisfied we maintained a pace that I’ll Have Another would admire. Then we came to the office with the mailboxes.

There is a ramp there, but on the other side there is small stairway, and we walked up it, then across the porch, and down the ramp. We did this three times until the little old man who runs the office thought we were Occupation Wall Street picketers and asked us to leave.

Then we began walking down the longest road. It was here that we tried the running portion of the challenge. But Foley don’t run unless there is fried chicken at the end of the track.

Daddy tried picking her up and running with her but she didn’t like that either. We passed a home under construction. There were stairs that led nowhere.
Daddy said we could do more stairs and we climbed up them. Suddenly the top seemed very small and we were like the flying Wallendas up there. We climbed back down and headed home.

All in all it wasn’t a bad challenge. We would have done better without Foley but it is the first time she completed a challenge so a tip of the tail for her.

And I got my badge for doing something for the elderly, helping Foley in a challenge.


Oh my gosh, here she comes at me, I gotta run!