how to teach a dog to run, and other things that should have happened sooner

teaching a dog to run is not as easy as it may sound.

he can walk on a leash perfectly pleasantly.

and he is speedy mcduff at the dog park!

but if you put sir bixby on a leash and start to run, he will freak the heck out.  he will try to run way too far ahead.  he will bite his leash and toss his head.  he will stop abruptly.  he will jump on fellow joggers as if to say, "hello look at us both you are running and i am running and we are all running!"  the joggers are not quite so overjoyed.

but it's silly and time-consuming for me to walk a dog for forty minutes and then jog around for another twenty when i could just run for twenty minutes total and have a tuckered out dog at the end of everything.  so today bixby and i practiced running.

he promptly ran too far ahead, bit his leash and tossed his head around, stopped abruptly, and jumped on a fellow jogger.  it wasn't a great start.

BUT.  it got better.  we tried again down the road when he'd had a chance to get some of that initial WE'RE ACTUALLY ON A WALK out of his system.  and he did slightly better sort of!  so then we walked a little and then we tried again.  and he did very nicely!  so that's what we did the rest of the time: ran a little, walked a little, ran a little, etc etc.  and then we got very very distracted by a squirrel at the brick frat boy house and had to look at that for a while.

but when we got home, buck the maintenance man had still not delivered a dehumidifier, which was incredibly disappointing.