A walk around the block

Taking Princess for a couple of half-mile walks each day is a hoot. At nearly 120 lbs, she is such a tub of lard that the poor pooch can hardly make it up the hill to our house.

Please understand that I use "hill" in the Florida sense of the word, and Florida is a state in which the highest point is 345 feet above sea level. That's lowest in the U.S. If you live in Colorado, or even Kentucky, a "hill" might sound challenging, but this involves an elevation change of perhaps 50 feet in 400 yards.

Climbing that hill, wimpy or not, is no easy feat for Princess, our newly adopted Golden Retriever. By the time we reach the top, we've rested twice.

It's pathetic. But the amazing thing about physical conditioning is that we, the two people who adopted this very fat dog, already can see improvement on just the fourth day. This evening, I barely had to pull Princess at all in the last 200 yards of that hill!

Please don't interpret the above to mean that we, the two people, think we are holier than she (or thou). Hardly. We are far from being in fantastic shape ourselves. We don't run marathons on a whim (or even with extensive premeditation, for that matter). We're both past 55, and I'm fat. But fat is a relative term.

Princess has a 38-inch waist. So do I. But I weigh 90 pounds more and am about 3 feet taller.

Our goal still is to get Princess down to normal weight, about 85 lbs, in a year. We'll let you know how it's going in a week or so when we get her on the scale at our vet's.

Meanwhile, Princess seems to be settling in pretty well.