Running Dog
"What Your Dog Knows About Running"? I opened the magazine eager to read its most-authoritative story yet. Who cares about coaches when you can get counsel from Spot or Bear?

You don't need sled dogs to know shaggy-dog stories showcase mush. They go like this: Our heroine's doubts about committing to a puppy dissolve when she sees the adorable pit bull (OK, it's usually not a pit bull) at the dog pound.

Heartwarming capers follow till one day our heroine smells smoke and learns Bowser has saved Baby Ichabod from a house fire.

Bowser suffers burns but continues to loyally run with our heroine as she passes from tragedy (quadruple amputation, leprosy, nuclear holocaust ...) to triumph (Olympic gold medals, Nobel Prize, sainthood ...).

There isn't a dry eye in the house as Bowser, who's taught her everything about undying love, licks her one last time with his old, gray muzzle, then gambols off to that Great Kennel in the Sky.

My best running dog ever, Zootsuit, fit this template almost exactly, with some exceptions. Her heartworming capers included creating pee lakes, chewing appliance wires, and electrifying combinations. I recall the time I smelled smoke and she raced downstairs to snarf up the burning wieners.

Zoot taught me how to perform sprint intervals between sniff-worthy trees, to build lateral speed chasing squirrels, and to cool down rolling in mud and cow pies.

I learned if you growl at snowmen, they won't attack you: a proactive measure the U.S. Department of Homeland Security might use. None of these prepared me for when Zoot finally went insane. It was storms at first. When the sky grew dark and wind howled, Zootsuit panicked. Rather than cower like normal dogs, she would smash through screen doors, second-floor windows and sills where I'd placed air-conditioners - to escape storms by running into them. It wasn't as bad trying to find her, amid hail and lightning, at 3 a.m. as it was during mid-day, because when people were out she'd snap at them. My concern for the neighbor kids, then our own newborn, grew with my home-repair bills.

Our vet could not explain these behaviors, and I was not going to pay some shrink to proclaim Zoot a pet-ophile needing analysis that would make her (and us) even crazier than we were.

Zoot still loved to run with me. She pranced, held her head and tail high like a plume when we passed other dogs leashed or penned in fences. Any distance, night or day, she was rarin' to go. When I praised her for NOT chasing snowmen, she looked back at me with the pure joy only dumb animals can achieve.

She spent the rest of her time hiding in a closet. It only took wind now to make her panic. She was a threat - to herself most of all - every time she did.

I could not put it off any longer. I took Zoot, my best running dog ever, for one last run, then we made our solemn way to the vet's.

I will never have another dog like Zootsuit. At least I hope not. I see her in hound heaven running free, cooling down in mud, shaking on the deity, then making off with the burning wieners, her head held high. MR