My love affair with Winnie

Winnie is really starting to grow on me. She's always grown on me; she's always been my dog; I've always been the one who loves her (John really just tolerates her). Now that it's warmer out (warmer is a relative term, I know), I have been taking her for lots and lots of walks. It's not only deepened my affection for her but also been a great outlet for me, because if you read my blog at all, you know that exercise is my main source of stress relief. This week I've been taking her on a walk almost everyday. It feels so incredibly good to get to the end of the day and know that you took her for a 2+ mile long walk, and that wasn't even your exercise for the day. That was completely bonus. There was even a day there that I walked her in the AM and the PM, which totaled 3.5 miles. To me, that's impressive. A really nice bonus is that for the past few days my weight, which has been stubbornly and consistently stuck at too high a number for the past few months, has been down 1.5 lbs. The new, more acceptable number its at, I haven't seen that number, honestly, at all in 2008. So it's really encouraging to see that. A lot of weight loss gurus say that simple walking can help keep the weight off. Bob Green of the "Best Life Diet" says that if you walk a mere 20-30 minutes a day, everyday it will magically help keep the weight off. The host of that TLC talk show about losing weight said that the difference between normally thin people and people struggling with their weight is a mere 2000 steps a day-that naturally thin people walk about 2000 more steps a day which is equal to about 20 minutes of walking (I think 2000 steps is one mile). So maybe my new lower weight is proof of that. I really hope I can keep up walking her on a near daily basis. My secret goal is to get up early 2 days of the week and take her for a 20 minute walk before John leaves for work. That takes some guts though-to get up early and forfeit sleep, going into the somewhat cold outdoors in the wee hours of the AM (I'd probably walk her at 6 am).

So anyway, the point of all of this is that I'm really starting to love Winnie a lot more. It's been so great spending time with her taking her on a walk. She's so cute because you can tell that she is forever grateful to me every time I take her out. In fact, the first 2 minutes of each walk are her jumping up and down-reaching my face-jumping so close to me. I think what she's saying is "Thank you! Thank you so much! I'm so happy you are taking me out on a walk!"