The Puppy That Ruined Me

August, 2003. So much can change in five years. I’ve heard it said that every seven years all the millions of cells in your body have been completely replaced; in effect, you are a new you, completely different from the one you were seven years ago. I can’t vouch for the science or whether it’s just an oft-repeated myth, but let’s go with my position of five years. I would think that not much would change in the average individual’s life, externally and internally, in that period of time. Certainly, in my life up to 2003 there wasn’t any drastic change. But in the five years since … wow.

I blame it all on a white lab puppy.

Allow me to indulge in some memories, here; I promise it won’t be skewed too much. Five years ago I was in my mid-30s, married just two years. Having no children but planning on some in the near future, my wife and I found an awesome apartment for a few hundred bucks a month under market value. We were making good money, having perhaps a third of the expenses we currently now have. There was lots of dining out, lots of partying with friends, lots of sleeping in weekends, lots of antiquing and going to movies and long weekend vacations and this and that and this and that.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not bitter about this part of my life coming to an end. Even back then I knew that it wouldn’t last forever; indeed, my wife and I were actively planning to purchase a house in an expensive area of the country and have one or two or three kids. So, we did save a bunch of money. We just enjoyed those early years of our marriage, like your buddy with four kids always warned you to do before you got hitched.

I don’t blame the dog for the events in the paragraph above. I blame it for what follows.

One thing I was particularly proud of during the early years of the new millennium was the shape I was in, physically. With few constraints on my time, I spent an hour or two a day working on my physique. Now, as I’ve said before on this blog, I wasn’t a bodybuilder or a fitness model by any stretch of the imagination. But I was at my ideal weight, lean, good muscles for my size, and a good aerobic capacity. I worked out six days a week and enjoyed every minute of it. It not only made me healthier physically but mentally as well. I was genuinely happy during this time doing those activities.

Aside from the weightlifting and stretching and occasional yoga, I decided to get back into running. I ran as a youngster and competed in a half-dozen 5K races. I wanted to do that again. My buddy also worked out with me on occasion also decided to resume running and we entered two races that fall. So, I ran a couple nights a week, ran with him on the weekends, and started prepping for my first race in twenty years, six weeks away.

Here’s where that damn dog comes in.

It was an absolutely gorgeous late-August day, a Saturday morning with no humidity and no clouds in the deep blue skies. My friend drove up from his place and we hit the streets running. I think we were trying for four or five miles at this point, a nice easy pace, just trying to get used to distances longer than 5K (which is three-point-one miles to the uninitiated). A fine run for a fine day. We started right outside my apartment, jogged up a long, slowly-inclining hill, zig-zagged through the back streets of my town. Chatting, lightly sweating but comfortable with a slight breeze and cool temperature, we were looking forward to the race next month and debated what times to shoot for.

Then, we turned a corner, and it happened.

I caught movement peripherally, off to my left. A woman came flailing out from a bush, it seemed to me in that split-second, rounding the side of her house and heading out towards us, out in the street.

She was chasing a crazy white lab puppy off its leash.

My friend was a couple paces ahead of me, but the dog didn’t focus on him. Oh, no, it left Steve alone. Instead, it bee-lined towards me. A direct collision course, speeding up, and it actually leapt into the air at me.

Instinctively, I also jumped up, hoping to clear the playful pup. No such luck. We collided in mid-air, and, fearing I would crush it or break its leg or back or tail or whatever, I twisted somehow, and landed weird on my right leg. Now it was my turn to flail, but I kept my balance and avoided sprawling on the rocky pavement. The dog was unharmed; in fact, it yapped and came back at me but I picked up the pace and passed the house quickly.

The woman got hold of the white lab and apologized to me as I fled. Steve turned his head around to see what the commotion was. I laughed, shook me head, told him I’d tell him about it later, and we finished the practice run maybe ten minutes later.

And wouldn’t you know, barely inside my apartment, I noticed a strange pain in my right leg. It wasn’t localized, but I felt a general ache around my knee and below. Maybe I pulled a muscle, I thought, or strained a tendon, or a ligament. We had some healthy chow, watched some tube, and waited for the girls to get back home. The pain faded and I forgot about it.

The next day, Sunday, I drove down to Steve’s house for our morning run. Humid and overcast, I started sweating immediately into the practice and then – BOOM! – pain flared in my right leg. Knee and below knee, just like after the run yesterday. I lagged behind my friend, first a couple of paces, then a couple of yards, then a quarter mile as he rounded a corner. I stopped, turned back in anguish, and limped to his house.

I laid off running for the next couple of weeks; the next time I ran was the 5K race that September, and I actually broke my time goal by thirty seconds. But I had to hobble back to the car, assisted by my wife. I could barely walk the next day at work, and scheduled an appointment with a specialist later in the week.

Turns out that puppy caused me to fracture my tibia. I had to stay off it for a couple of days, and the doctor refused to allow me to run for three months while it healed naturally. This had the unpleasant effect of spilling into other areas of my life, too. I stopped working out. I started eating more junk food. I gained a couple of pounds. The fire in my belly cooled, extinguished by cold German beer.

Six months later we bought a house. Four months after that my daughter was born. Two years later I had a hernia operation (oh the ravages of time!). Five months after that it was discovered I had atrial fibrillation when I got winded every time I walked up a flight of stairs.

Yes, a whole lotta changes can fall upon you in five years’ time. I often wonder how far I would have gone that fall, and later that spring – 10Ks? Half-marathons? Marathon? Would I experience every day double or triple the amount of energy I now have to utilize due to such phenomenal physical shape? I glance down and ruefully pat my belly, out of breath as I type at my keyboard, and growl at the white lab puppy that caused my running goals to derail like a runaway freight train.