HOR
Raworth On The Run
I stop my watch after a pacy five-mile run, exhausted and sweating. My running mate stares at me, bright-eyed. ‘Is that it?’ she seems to be saying. She’s ready for more. Despite having legs much shorter than mine, she’s barely broken out of a trot for the past 40 minutes. Meet Luna, my three-year-old cavapoo – a poodle King Charles cavalier cross – who has no idea when to stop.
Luna and I have been running together for two years now. We started slowly, unsure if we’d take to this partnership well. But a mile turned into a parkrun and from there we continued to build. I’ve discovered a whole new layer of running joy with my four-legged friend close to my heels. She’s great company, she shares my love of being outside and the rain doesn’t bother her – the muddier, the better is how she feels. We’re kindred running spirits. I chat to her as we go. She rarely answers back; just the occasional yap if I’m not fast enough up the hills.
Yet I’ve never been sure how far I can actually take her. Eight miles?
Ten? Is that too much? I waited, of course, until she was fully grown. To do otherwise would have caused her harm. Then a vet told me I could run with her as long as I stopped when she began to look tired. But this is my problem: she never looks tired. At the end of a five-mile run, she will zoom around me in circles, sniffing out a ball or a stick so that she, at least, can carry on. It’s well and truly exhausting.
So I’ve turned to the experts – DogFit, they’re called. One sunny Saturday, Luna and I head to the Surrey Hills. A DogFit trio with their pack of four bigger dogs harness her up with a contraption that makes her leap into my arms. She’s shaking, unsure what this is. But when I’m strapped up, too, she calms down. DogFit comes from canicross – a sport that started in mainland Europe for dogs that pull sleds in the snow. Running cross-country kept them fit in the summer. Ginetta George and Gail Walker started DogFit a decade ago. Now they have 60 trainers and thousands of dogs and runners all over the UK. The kit they’ve designed comes in three pieces: a belt for the human and a bungee lead and harness for the dog.
Now, Luna isn’t terribly sociable with other dogs; she thinks she’s pretty much human. Her doggyinteraction is usually chasing off others trying to get her ball. So I wonder how she’ll react to running in a
