Lesson Learned

One of the fascinating things about aging is that while each experience is unique, there is also some form of repetitiveness to each one. Having been through similar situations time and again, you get it. You can easily predict what the outcome will be.   

For the last nine years, my border collie and I have walked through frigid temperatures and blizzards. This is her time of the year. She may opt out of walking on a warm summer day, but never during the winter. In fact, she will sometimes lay down during a walk just to eat snow and enjoy the cold snow on her belly. Most of our walk is on shoveled or partially shoveled paths, but we have one long stretch through our neighborhood park where the snow is NEVER plowed. At times it has been up to my knees. Izzy hasn't cared. In fact, I think she has always enjoyed the challenge. It might be an exhausting physical accomplishment for me, but she has always bounced through the snow with gusto. 

This is the entry.

The walk continues

through a park area.

But yesterday when my almost ten year old Izzy and I hit this open area on our walk, she stopped. I could see her thinking. (It's lovely to see her mind working.) She looked up at me for a second as if to tell me she had made a decision and then turned around. Our walk would not include this path. Like me, she has hit that place in her life where she knows what she is getting into, and it was as if she remembered what a workout this part of the walk could be and said, "I am not up to it anymore." To be truthful, I was relieved. I was seriously dreading this part of our walk. We had between 8-10 inches of snow and this path is often tricky not only  because it isn't shoveled, but because so many have stepped on it already and those footprints have frozen over. She has gotten to an age where when she lays down, she groans like I do. She isn't a puppy anymore. Life has given her enough experience to know she doesn't need that type of physical workout anymore.