Wag Walk & Run - Helping Paws 5K

Jeff, with Abby and Zoey, and I with Zac, did this 5K yesterday. Lovely day, at the lovely Purgatory Creek park in Eden Prairie.

Lots of service dogs in training, especially Golden Retrievers. Zac helped socialize a pup to Shelties, and was a credit to his breed. He does not like puppies, so I was really happy that he didn't curl his lip when the little guy got in his face. Zoey also helped socialize, but we kept Abby away.

At the start of the run, we were bunched up a bit. Jeff, Abby and Zoey chose to go to the end of the runners, where it was slightly less chaotic. Zac and I hung with Clara and Scooby at the start, and they are good runners, so we started near the beginning of the running group. Not that we stayed at the beginning once the race started! Because of crowding, we needed to start out at a pretty good pace, yet as it spaced out, we slowed down somewhat. For us though, we kept a solid pace all the way through the race and did not walk at all. Just had two pit stops for Zac, and a little water. Zac started out a little concerned about all the dogs and people, but he soon settled down and assumed his trademark running smile.

This was a really good mental motivator because the excitement of the race kept us at a pace much faster than our typical one. It's just what I needed --- now I know we can do it. We did a sprint to the finish, which we both love, and we still had some left on the tank.

Post-race, we hung with Clara, who loved up Zac and Zoey (Abby had no interest) and had a few snacks. We did listen to a canine police officer, who mentioned he was really happy when he was not assigned a Belgian Malinois. That made us laugh.

Great day, wonderful experience for our first race. Thank you, Helping Paws.