The Diet and Exercise of an Empowered Donkey

In keeping with a general lack of honesty, I am going to refer to my sweet little brown dog as Waffles.   What started as a name my roommate used so he wouldn’t be embarrassed when he used my dog to meet girls has become an oddly fitting name as she begins to look less like a little fawn and more like Donkey.

Both get very excited about waffles.  Unfortunately, only one makes them.

The similarity is especially prevalent in the belly region.   Now, words cannot express how important Waffles is to me.  She was No. 1 Comforter long before I even met Spencer, and certainly before he worked out all the kinks of comforting me.  There will be much weeping and rending of garments when she passes.  I’m not certain I’ll survive it.  So the goal has become to make certain she lives forever. 

This is where that belly begins to become a problem.  Waffles happens to be what particularly insensitive vets call “obese,”  although I prefer the term “awesome and adorable.”  So she’s been put on a diet and exercise plan.  It’s killing me.  Spencer is under the impression that I’m projecting, and I’m under the impression that Spencer is wrong. 

The thing is, I love food.  And so does Waffles.  We love food together.  We both linger hopefully around the kitchen when we smell food cooking, despite spending the rest of the day napping under as many blankets as possible. 

And – and I know this is true – we both stress about our love of food.  Because we are women.  And despite how we know that we are empowered women and we don’t have to conform to society’s image of beauty, we worry about what feels like an inability to control what and how much we eat.  We worry about how that makes us look.  And every time we look at the extremely small amount of food that we have for that meal,  our self-esteem drops that much lower that we allowed ourselves to get into the situation that we have to watch what we eat in the first place. 

And the exercise.  Ohh the exercise.  Nothing is worse.  Somehow we are both always behind on the exercise we’re supposed to be doing, even when we hardly eat anything.  And exercise is never as much fun as you think it’s going to be.  Waffles is always under the impression that running is going to be TheBestEver; I always know it will be awful; but we both end up with the same realization every day.

And every day, after our run, sweet Waffles looks up at me with her doe eyes, and I know what she’s thinking.

 
Running is pretty barfy.

Oh, sweet Waffles.  How right you are.