As any who has known Berry since he came to Oregon Dog Rescue in February 2013, Berry has walked slowly at his own pace.
But Berry can walk fast, he just does not really want to. One day while walking Berry for ODR, I met up with another walker who was walking Berry's nemesis, Tommy. They said hello, Berry started to get a bit grumpy and Tommy decided to keep on walking. But a strange thing happened: Berry wanted to keep up with the much younger Tommy.
And keep up he did. We ended up walking mostly side by side, making sure they did not get too close to each other.
When we adopted Berry, I was hoping he would start to walk faster, but he never really has. When I come home from work, he is excited and when we go for a quick walk he trots for a little bit but then is back to his slow, methodical self.
Until today. Keiko and I went walking with Berry and it was a cool, rainy day. He started of fast, but soon slowed a little. But he was still going a bit quicker.
We got to the woods and let him off his leash. He meandered a bit and then when he was near me I started talking to him and he replied with some of his loud, playful barks.
I then rubbed and scratched him and he took off trotting. We encouraged him and he pretty much trotted the whole length of the woods with a little scratchies and encouragement.
We got down to the bridge and then headed back. On the way back, he occasionally trotted and all in all was quite a bit faster than usual. Too bad I did not time his walk as I am sure it would be a record. Quite a bit faster than his 35 minutes per mile he did just yesterday!
