3 Ginger Snaps

103km

That’s about how far I walked with her. Mostly on residential streets. Some of it through brush and bramble. A good chunk of it in the dark.

There is a lot of time and space to think over the course of 100km of walking. Time to contemplate new jobs. Time to reflect on passage through old challenges. Time to consider the burden of leadership. Time to think about nothing at all and just listen to the surrounding din of the world. Birds. Crickets. People splashing in pools. Water running downstream. Recycling bins getting dragged to the curb. Small bands of youth roaming the streets in the summer twilight on their bicycles full of bravado and mischief. For a teacher, the joy of summer is in the expansion of time and Stevie helped me fill the nooks and crannies where field hockey practice and theatre groups and basketball games live in the other ten months of the year.

Stevie arrived on August 5. A Tennesse mountain cur. 43lbs of muscle and spirit. Fully attentive to every rustle in every bush we passed. Our third foster dog of 2022 – the goal was to get her adopted before the start of school – and she departed today right on cue – a full 24hours before the start of school. Happily trotting down the driveway with her new adoptive family without so much as a look back in our direction – leaving us with nothing to do but head back inside with a mixed bag of emotions and begin to fill pencil cases and put divider tabs in binders and vacuum up short white hairs that we will no doubt be finding under cushions and clinging to sweaters for a while yet.

I started thinking seriously about Stevie’s gift when Arden started talking to me about the profiles of all the dogs she wanted to adopt on all the rescue sites I had told her about. Arden’s not someone I would describe as a motivated reader. She can read. And sometimes she’s beginning to enjoy it. And most of the time it’s a chore she dutifully puts herself through because she knows it’s important and takes practice. Regardless… as a teacher of early readers I know that the best way to get a kid reading is to find them a genre they connect with. Turns out that the reality of having to say good bye to your foster dog is a strong motivator. As far as genres go, Dog adoption profiles are pretty niche; while it is most definitely a sad commentary on pet ownership, I am grateful for their abundance online.

We met Stevie’s adoptive family last Tuesday. Between then and today (Sunday) I have exchanged a barrage of texts describing all the things I have learned about her in the month she was in our care. She loves cucumbers and apple cores and watermelon rinds. She’s great on a schedule. Her prey drive is strong enough to pull your arm out of its socket if you miss the signals when she sets up on something. She’s mouthy. She loves to retrieve and learned quickly to drop toys on command in exchange for food. And so On and so forth. We were certain she would be a foster from day one and she never really achieved family status – all the same – we knew her well – or at least as well as anyone can come to know a dog in a month. And now – all those moments spent together: the scratches on the couch during Netflix binge watches, lobbing the tennis ball into the bushes just so I could watch her leap up and pounce on it, sprinkling her food in the clover patch so she couldn’t gobble it all in a few bites. All a good reminder that life is impermanence. Fleeting moments make the best summer memories!

How I got to 103kms

32 days x ~40mins/day = 1280 mins of walking … let’s call it 21 hours

21 hours x 3km/hour* = 63km

* I can walk 5km/hour easily – and so can Stevie – but she tends to stop and smell lots of things – so her speed is slower than if I were walking alone – or with a well trained dog.

+ 8 days with an addition 5km of walking each day = 40km

63 + 40 = 103kms