Worry Wart

Worry will kill you. That’s what I keep telling Gretchen and ironically, she keeps saying the same thing to me.cat

Still we are both worriers.

I take medication for my anxiety and tendency to worry and while it helps, I still fret about all kinds of stuff. Gretchen should take medication, but she doesn’t. Instead, she just tosses and turns at night (her busiest worry time) and then runs around during the day trying to make certain she has nothing to worry about.

It never works. She still worries.

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This week’s worries centered around our busy busy schedule. Gretchen had a pet sitting gig during the week, which meant that she spent her nights at Cosa and Tomo’s house and then during the day, went back and forth between our house, our dog walking clients’ houses, and her work at the pool.

What this meant for me was a really weird schedule. I’m not sure why Gretchen didn’t worry about that, but I think worrying about me was down the list a ways.

What’s there to worry about, you ask? That’s a great question because I can tell you that the worries that keep her up at night, never ever really materialize the next day.motherandson

For example, Gretchen worries that she’ll not have time to make it from one appointment to the next or that she’ll forget  something like locking a door or running an errand to pick up more poop bags or my favorite dog food from the Natural Pet Pantry (we were running low), which is a long drive to Burien (we get the food at a cheaper price and I get to visit with all the great women at Natural Pet Pantry!).

newsiblingsAnyway, Gretchen tosses and turns at night reorganizing the schedule in her head to make certain each dog, each errand, and every responsibility in between is attended to in the most efficient manner. It’s funny now that I think about it because years and years ago (way before me) Gretchen was a delivery driver. Yep, she’s had all sorts of jobs, but one of her first out of college was riding around on a moped and bicycle delivering stuff. She knew her way around the city via the alleyways and could make it from one end of the city to the other in less than 15 minutes. Even now, when we have to run errands, she’s always thinking of the quickest route.rosie

So it kind of makes sense that we all our daily responsibilities, she’d be scheming in her dreams about who should walk first, which errand should be done second, and what she can squeeze in along the way to make our day run smoothly.

Only problem is, all this worrying and scheming makes for sleepless nights and on top of the normal hubbub of our lives, now that she’s living at another house, I’ve become an added responsibility.

stumpedAt first I started to worry that I’d be forgotten, lost in the shuffle of all our dog walking clients and the two pet sitting dogs. Instead, Gretchen took me on almost every walk and on every errand and by the end of the week, I was one very tired pup.

All that worrying paid off, I think, because the week went off with out too many hitches. This is the thing I’ve been trying to tell Gretchen — if she didn’t spend so much time thinking about what needs to happen in the future and just focused on the now (not then) everything would really be okay. I mean, does all that late night planning and strategizing really make a runningdifference? Do the dogs notice a difference? I don’t think so.

Still, she worries. She worried that I might not be a good dog when I met the new Rosie (Tyson’s new sister), but by the end of the week, she was very very proud of me because I was stellar in my behavior. Rosie and I are still getting to know each other and Rosie is still settling in with her family, but I have a feeling that in the near future we’re gonna have fun running around together!

She’s a live wire, that Rosie!

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And I even let her sit on me during photo time. I rarely let anyone sit on me so that’s a good sign, don’t ya think?

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So stop worrying!

Cosa and Tomo are two elderly Akitas. Cosa is Tomo’s mother and they are, according to Gretchen, very close. I cosadid’t get to meet them because they are, as I’ve stated, Akitas and tend to be a bit Akita-like around other dogs.

Gretchen says they are complete sweethearts — very gentle and calm — but still, I didn’t get to walk with them. Instead, I waited in the car on a couple of days while she took them out for another walk before we headed off to our other clients or one of our many errands.

They are very big and she’s probably right…I may have barked at them and pushed their Akita buttons so I just sat quietly in the back of the car.

Cosa, the mother, is 14 years old. That’s pretty good for an Akita, but she doesn’t walk very far. Around the block is a long walk for Cosa, but Tomo gets to go for longer seeing as how he’s only 13 1/2!

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We had our regular clients too — Monty, Henri and Bella, Roux, and Carter and Kali. No Wobbie this week since her parents were home with the flu. We sure hope they get better soon because we miss Woobie!

And we had a fun birthday party for my friend, Paige who turned 5 years old on the first of February!

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cake!

 

Paige is not a worrier at all…well, except that she might not get all the cake!

It’s funny, but I was thinking about it all. I’m a worrier and Gretchen’s a worrier, but none of our clients worry in the least!

Okay, Tyson worries, but he’s like me…he’s on medication to ease the stress of it all. And it appears that having a new sister is helping him. They get along very well together.

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Rosie…I’m not sure she’s a worrier, but she definitely is learning impulse control. She gets so excited and over 3boysstimulated sometimes that the only thing she can think to do is to grab her leash and tug on it. Sometimes it makes forward progress difficult, but slowly, she’s learning to contain her excitement and walk well on her leash.

Monty on the other hand is a go-with-the-flow kind of guy! Nothing stresses him out (except maybe a long car ride) and every time we show up to walk with him, he’s very happy and almost surprised to see us! He’s a guy who totally lives in the moment.

Roux sounds like she’s a worrier when we first arrive — barking uncontrollably — but once we head out, she’s all business. Okay, she does worry about somethings though, for the longest time, we couldn’t think of why she got so nervous walking down Jackson Street.

Then, when we were out walking this week, someone had set up a booth on the sidewalk with flapping big flags. Roux got really nervous and I turned to Gretchen and said, “She’s worried about the flags!” And sure enough, on our route along Jackson Street, there are flags by the car repair place and Roux freaks out right at those flags!

triangleHenri and Bella, in my humble opinion, are too busy sniffing every blade of grass and kicking up their back legs to spend any time worrying. At first, I must admit, I was worried about our relationship. They are kind of forward, something Gretchen tells me is a terrier trait. I don’t do very well with forward, but the more we walk, the more we’ve gotten into a rhythm. No worries anymore!

Oddly, Carter and Kali are opposite in the worry department. Carter hasn’t laughinghad a worry in his life except, perhaps, that he’s missing out on something. Kali is like me…she worries and that is perhaps why, on a walk, we walk side by side while Carter walks 30 miles to our one circling around us checking out every second of the life that surrounds us.

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At the end of the week, Gretchen kicks herself for worrying so much. Everything worked out okay or as it should be and no one got cheated out of a walk or having fun. Even me.

Now, if we can convince Gretchen that her sleepless nights don’t help anyone. Instead, they just make her tired andthen I worry about her. Not good.

So as we head into next week, with Gretchen still with Cosa and Tomo and all our dog walking clients on the schedule and all her pool clients scheduled for their therapy, there’s really no reason to worry. Right?

That’s how I’m going to spend my weekend…convincing Gretchen that it’s all going to go perfectly so give it a rest! The worry that is.

Until then,

Rubin

 

 

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