If you have been here for the month of May, I don’t have to tell you just how beautiful it has been in the Roaring Fork Valley. Cool and crisp for the first couple of weeks and then warming each day with huge white clouds floating through cobalt blue skies. Though dry, we have had half our normal year-to-date precipitation according to the National Weather Service; the spring green has nevertheless exploded. And with every little rain shower, more flowers pop up on the trails and in the fields.
And nobody, human or canine, has appreciated it more than my dog, Crouton. She wakes every morning with the sun and an enthusiasm that is infectious. Each day, she looks forward to her favorite routine of getting out on the mesa and taking a brisk trot along our dirt road as she gets her miles in.
Crouton is a chocolate Labrador who is getting a little gray around the edges as she has just celebrated her eighth birthday. But she still runs like a pup and goes crazy, bouncing in tiny circles before each outing. She is a leash dog (She has a mind of her own and has little fear of heading off for an adventure), so she and I are tethered together as we run. While she jerks from one side of the road to the other when we start, seeking out smells that are new or familiar from past excursions, she usually falls into a faithful routine after a couple of miles and sets a solid pace. It is both a pleasure and an honor to run the road on a daily basis with my dog. Especially in a month as beautiful as this May.
I have been running with dogs for most of my life, just about every day in fact, and I have had some great companions.
The first was a black spaniel named Snooker who joined our family when I was in the second grade. Snooker and I would jump from stone to stone each afternoon on our way to the best swimming hole on Malibu Creek. That dog loved the water and would leap from a rocky perch repeatedly into the swimming hole as many times as I would let her. Snooker was tough; she survived more than one rattlesnake bite and a couple of wildfires and wagged her way into the afterlife at an advanced age.
Snooker was followed by a beach dog named Columbus, whom we found in a pet shop in New York City at 86 and Columbus called “Akitas of Distinction.” No, she was not an Akita but a beautiful golden Cocker Spaniel who loved to run the bluffs of Santa Monica and cruise in the passenger seat of our white Jeep.
Since our arrival in Aspen, we have had a succession of quality dogs, all of whom were runners. Vino and Journey were both black labs, long of leg and friendly to the core. For years, they would accompany me on the Rio Grande Trail from the post office to Stein Park and beyond in spring, summer, fall, and winter. They didn’t mind the weather as long as they got their four-mile run in. Then there was Talisker, another Spaniel, this one black and white and regal in demeanor. Tally, as we called him, was not as fast in a dead sprint as Vino and Journey, but boy could he draw attention to himself. Everywhere we went, Tally would draw a crowd.
Yes, there are few things better than running with the dogs in springtime. Thanks for your indulgence.
May you have a runner dog of your own.
