Hi, everybody. I’m here! I’m here! Facebook has been banned in my house for at least a month because Mom was just getting too mad, and too sad with the election coverage. I have no political opinions because I’m a dog, but Mom strongly hated one of the candidates with all her soul – this candidate was her version of the Rollerblader; just hearing that person’s name could ruin her whole day. Based on where we’re from, you can probably guess which candidate I’m talking about, but that’s not important. What’s important is that I don’t think it’s good to let something out of your control ruin your life so much. I’m a dog, and I can’t even vote, but I’m pretty sure that whether the one with the bad head fur, or the other one with the bad head fur won I’ll still get to eat my food and my cheese and go for runs where I get to sniff and bark at things. So life is good, and it’s all going to be okay.
Mom has missed a very important detail with all of her moping: She can run again! Around the time she started getting really bummed out by all the breed-ist stuff that she was seeing on TV, she started taking me on longer and longer runs to escape her sadness. Sometimes that sadness would overtake her, and we would have to run really fast to out run that heartache. So even though Mom is devastated about the ugly things that this election dredged up, pushing back against the ugliness has brought us back to something we love, and that can help us heal. When I’m out there running with Mom, I’ve seen runners of all shapes and sizes: big fat runners, tiny runners, old runners, young runners, fast runners, slow runners, and runners of every breed and color. Mom tells me that people get together to run in races all around the country, and whether they voted for the squishy-faced orange guy or the lady with the clip-on hair and crazy eyes, they all enjoy sharing the roads and accomplishing something together. I think that the people should focus on that, and other things we have in common rather than how scared we are of each other. I mean, I enjoy my runs a lot more when I’m chasing Friends than when I’m afraid the people I see might be enemies. Sometimes I see someone that scares me, and it ruins my whole run because every time the bushes rustle I get spooked. It’s a shame to waste a run by being a ‘fraidy cat.
I had a whole paragraph about how lucky I am to live in a country where I have the freedom to do a lot of the same things that human people do (sit on the couch, help Mom drive, wear a funny hat to celebrate my birthday…), but I don’t want to get off topic by barking my face off in a patriotic rant. I just wanted to let my friends know that I’m still running, I’m doing okay and that I love my running friends from all around the country. Let’s all respect each other by keeping politics out of the comments, and just acknowledge that we can all agree that red states or blue states, this is great running country!
–Oscar the Pooch
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