I Kid You Not

For reasons I'm still not entirely clear on, one of our clients decided to bring her baby goat Georgie into our office for a visit. My office allows us to bring our dogs to work and perhaps this somehow inspired her to bring her goat. I put it down to just another one of those 'Only in Boulder' moments. I've never really seen a goat up close & personal before, let alone a 3 week old baby goat. Apparently he's some special breed of miniature goat and was pretty tiny, just a bit larger than the office's resident Jack Russell Terrier. Ernie the JRT was terrified of the goat, literally shaking from fear. I was tempted to bring my Border Collie mix Cody out of my office to see if I could initiate an impromptu herding instinct test but I thought better of it in the end. Baby goats are actually quite soft and though this one was very cute and seemed remarkably clean for a barnyard animal he could have done with some deodorant or something. The bad news is after seeing the pictures my husband now wants a miniature goat to add to our menagerie. I wonder if they're any good at agility? I could use some more aggravation in my life.

Tuesday
4 mile trail run (Foothills Trail) with Lola

Wednesday
Rest day. Will someone please explain that to Lola? There is no word in Border Collie for' rest day'. I took her to the dog park so she could chase tennis balls. Walking back to the car I saw a fox hunting in the grass right off the trail. He jumped about 3-4 feet into the air and pounced on something. I had to take Lola down a different trail to avoid it and when it finally saw us it ran only a short distance away then sat and watched us. The foxes in Boulder are so used to people they let you get pretty close. When it realized we weren't interested it went back to its rodents. A rather uncomfortable metaphor for Congress at the moment.

Thursday
3 mile run in the a.m. with Lola. Dragged my ass around the lake, I was really tired.

2700 yards swimming at master's in the p.m. Dragged my ass up and down the pool, still pretty tired.

Friday
2 mile walk with both dogs, just didn't feel up to running. The walk felt great though.

Rode the bike trainer in my office for about 40 minutes at lunch time. I couldn't go any longer because I had to get back to work but to be honest I didn't feel up to much else anyway.

Saturday
Woke up feeling really dragged out tired. Resting heart rate was 45 bpm and I wondered if I was dead. Normally it's around 54. I skipped agility course run throughs in the morning hoping to save my energy for a bike ride but I just didn't feel like I could manage it. I laid down on the couch around 1:30 pm and was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. Didn't get up until 3:00 pm when my husband came home from his ride and woke me up (or more accurately the overexcited dogs greeting him woke me up).

It felt like it could be the return of the borderline anemia I suffered in my teens and early 20's though of course it could be anything, the symptoms were so vague. I bought some iron pills for the first time in almost 20 years and had a nice spinach dish from an Indian restaurant for dinner. Took the dogs to the agility field on the way to the restaurant to run the course from this morning. The short bit of sprinting I had to do had me exhausted and dizzy. The dogs did great though, only fell for one off course.

Sunday
Woke up feeling better, resting heart rate up to 50-51 and I felt like I might actually be able to do something today. Wanted to go for a bike ride but the weather was iffy so I decided on a trail run instead. Went along the Foothills Trail and took a little spur trail that doesn't seem to have a name. It's not super steep but it does have lots of little ups and downs, twists and turns. It's mostly smooth single track with a few rocky bits. The sun was shining and I was running in shorts and short sleeves for the first time in who know when. It felt like I was really flying on the downhills and I'd finally got some life back in me. Had some more spinach and iron pills today. Maybe Popeye really knew what he was talking about.

I barely had time to shower and shove a little food in after my run before it was time to leave for agility class. I took both dogs and switched off between them for each exercise. Today we were focusing on USDAA style Gamblers, one of my favorite events. Both dogs did great, getting the tricky gamble the first time. Of course we somehow messed it up on subsequent tries, probably due to timing issues on my part, but they eventually got it. Cody was doing especially well. Lola took off after some goats in an adjacent field at the start of class but I got her attention back on me pretty quickly. What is it about those goats? One of them actually looked like Georgie. Maybe he was flirting with Lola, trying to get me back for calling him stinky.