The post that started it all – Day 1 of the Dog Walk Challenge.

A year ago, I decided to start walking a mile a day. If you want to read more about that, here is the post where I first discussed the Dog Walk Challenge (it’s different than the first post of the Dog Walk Challenge). Initially, the challenge was supposed to last a month – something slightly challenging, but easily doable.

That first month was not easy.

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First, I was having to wake up earlier, which was not fun. Second, even though a mile doesn’t seem that long, it’s not that short, either. It requires some effort to make the time – for us, at least 20-25 minutes – every single day. While we eventually settled into a nice pattern of walking in the morning before work, it took some time to get a rhythm going.

Now? It’s such a habit that if I don’t get my morning walk in, I start to get antsy and pester people (read: Paul) about getting my walk in. It has been great for Choppy’s health – anyone who has been around her regularly thinks she looks much better than she did a year ago, even though at eight years old, she is probably now in her early senior years. Choppy has never been an active dog, even as a puppy, but the exercise is clearly good for her.

What come next? I’m not going to stop. There is part of me who wants to take a day off, because if I keep going, it becomes harder and harder to stop. But is that a bad thing? Finding the time to walk during my day is sometimes hard, but so far it has never been impossible. Inconvenient? Yes. Very inconvenient? Definitely a couple of times. But never impossible.

I got a lot of great suggestions as to what to do for Year 2 of the Dog Walk Challenge – thanks to everyone who had ideas for me. I know what I’m planning to do, so I’ll have the details for that soon for everyone. In the meantime, some stats for Year 1.

Total Miles: 452
Average Miles Per Day: 1.2

Day 365:

Date: April 29, 2017
Location: Home
Length: 1.3 Miles
Who: Sarah & Choppy

For those of you who missed it, we took a video of the Day 365 walk. Thanks to some technical difficulties (cold and running out of batteries), the camera shut off part way through, so there are actually two videos of the walk. Only a small portion of the walk is missing, so you get pretty much the entire 1.3 miles noted above. And, I figured out how to embed them here, so you don’t even have to go to Facebook to watch them! Enjoy, and on to Year Two!

Video One:

Video Two: