The Unexpected Running Partner.

When selecting a house to call a home five years ago, we were torn with the decision to pick a home with land on the outskirts of town, or a home in the borough, surrounded by neighbors and close to the library, grocery store, and restaurants. One would think that years of living in the city, avoiding neighbors, and shunning eye contact would only push us out to the country, but it actually made us yearn for a neighborly relationship and we selected the borough, choosing to engulf ourselves in community.

This choice proves to be a gamble, of sorts. You can only select your neighbors by their exterior, not knowing if the clean and well-kept house and yarn actually hides a meth lab or Susie Homemaker. We selected a house because we liked it, however, and lucked out. Our neighbors are, for the most part, friendly, open, and share much the same values we do. Our back yard is quiet at night, despite the broken down cars and unpainted porches of the house next door. But I'll take quiet over mess any day...I think.

And the quiet isn't guaranteed. Said Neighbor has pets. Said Neighbor has two dogs and unknown amount of cats. The cats tend to find haven in our yard, which is fine with us--not so much for Curley. One of the dogs continues to "just say hi" to us by growling and barking every time we walk up the yard. The other dog is as dumb as a brick, and chooses to spend nights running around the neighborhood. This isn't uncommon. The neighbor chooses to call the dog home by standing outside the back door and yelling for him three or four times. This, also, isn't uncommon.

What is uncommon is for me to get four houses down the street on my morning run and see Neighbor Dog, tags clinking on his collar, tongue wrapped around his head, running along beside me. "Onyx, go home." I'm met with happy panting. I run a little bit longer, Onyx keeping page, running ahead to stop and smell a tree, then catching up with me.

I turned around before I neared a busy road--I didn't have a leash for him, he was content with running into the street, and I did not care to start my day seeing the dog get hit. My new plan was to run home, put him back in the gate of the neighbor's yard, and continue my run. It was cool, I felt great, and I was ready for a nice, pre-dawn run.

I get to the house and Onyx obeys and goes through the gate into the yard. I turn around and head off in the other direction, crossing over a busy road to continue on back roads.

Clink, clink, clink. Pant, pant, pant.

Obviously, the conversation we had about staying in the gate slid right off his slippery tongue, or the morning made for a great run for another species besides myself. I wove my way up and down back streets, letting Onyx run beside me, behind me, in front of me, and zig-zagging across the street. I got dirty looks from people obviously ashamed that I would let my dog run loose, and came close to flagging down a passing cop to tell him to take the dog home. I finally called the run short...the fear of the dog getting hit ruined the run and I couldn't enjoy the temperatures or peace and quiet.

I got home and put the dog back in the gate. I told him to get a leash and he could run with me, but not before that. He looked at me with big eyes, his tongue hanging to his chest, and a look that mixed happiness of the run and confusion on why I would ever cut it short.

The dog got loose again, and spent the rest of the morning sitting in our back yard, panting and waiting for me to go on another run.