Well that was... interesting...

In partnership with

The Daily Newsletter for Intellectually Curious Readers

• We scour 100+ sources daily

• Read by CEOs, scientists, business owners and more

• 3.5 million subscribers

Sign up today!

Hey everyone! Hope this newsletter finds you well. It’s finally beginning to feel like fall outside here in Indiana! It had been so warm again that we weren’t able to run the dogs the last 3.5 weeks. Until Wednesday.

I would love to tell you about how awesome our run was, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case this time. And it happens. This is the reality of mushing sometimes.

When the temperature fell to around 50 degrees around 10pm, we decided to take the dogs for a run. Whenever we ask them if they want to go for a run, they get super excited. Boo was spinning and circles, doing parkour off the furniture, making his weird Boo sounds because we weren’t getting ready fast enough for his liking.

Riley helped me harness the dogs up and hook them to the scooter. I jumped on, and we took off! We had a smooth, fast start. About a quarter mile in, I noticed Boo was a bit slower and Pence was doing most of the pulling.

Right at a half mile, Boo suddenly stopped. Dead in his tracks, right in the middle of the road. I was looking all around to see if something had spooked him, but didn’t see anything. He also didn’t act scared, he just stood in place. He wasn’t limping, so I didn’t think he was hurt. We did pass some houses with Halloween decorations, maybe that weirded him out?

We stood there for a few minutes. Boo refused to move. Meanwhile, Pence can’t stand stand still when she’s outside of the house, so she was going in circles, tangling the lines up like no other. I kept untangling them and trying to get them to start running again.

Pence would jump up and try to take off, but Boo was standing firm, refusing to move. He even tried to back out of his collar which was connected to Pence’s collar with a neckline. I realized that he was not wanting to run, or even walk home for some reason. I called Riley and had him drive over to us to pick Boo up.

Boo jumped in the car. Pence and I took off again to finish the run on the scooter. She absolutely killed it by herself! When we got back home, both dogs ran inside to get a drink of water. Boo started eating, as he always does after he runs. He was acting totally fine again after that.

I was pretty frustrated that we had a bad run and was still trying to figure out what happened. I couldn’t help but think “does Boo not want to run anymore”? But he ran perfectly fine several times last month.

I also remembered that Riley made a comment about 3 hours before our run that Boo had “the runs 💩”. He doesn’t typically have that, so it was odd for sure. He had only eaten his usual kibble and a pork chop within the last 24 hours. But something had messed up his stomach at least a little bit earlier in the day. Maybe that was still bothering him during the run?

In the end, we will probably never know what the cause was. Both dogs seem to be acting like their normal selves, so we’ll give it another try in the next couple days and see what happens!

We’ll keep you posted!

-Hannah, Riley, Boo, and Pence 💜