Dog Walking Makes You Fat

Don't get me wrong. When I first started walking dogs, I lost enough weight to have every single person I know telling me I was losing weight. "You're losing weight!" As if I'm not the person putting on my pants every morning.

Why is it rude to comment on weight gain but not weight loss? "God, where'd your ass go?" Um, I sent it in as my entry fee into the Calista Flockhart Fan Club.

It just took me a while to adjust to my new work day. My entire career had been spent behind a desk or standing in front of a room talking and I was never more than two doors away from a fridge and a microwave. Now I was obeying one condo unit's "No Dogs In the Elevator" policy for five stories a day and sprinting after run away dogs on a regular basis.

Plus, the leftovers I used to eat tasted terrible cold and I wasn't wasting money on some overpriced Thermos until my client list was longer. Oh, and did I mention the two English Labs that squeezed around and eventually chewed through the metal pet barrier designed to keep them out of my front seat? If they found my lunch bag before the bag of dog treats, I went hungry for the day. Not that the human-food-induced dog farts and diarrhea didn't make me lose my appetite anyway.

Now I've got a metal thermos that takes longer to chew into than it does for me to get in an out of a dog's house, a grocery list full of easy-to-eat-while-driving snacks, and no more Labs after they ate something poisonous and require 24 hour supervision from the long lasting health complications. And no, the poison wasn't from my lunch. My bets are on the metal pet barrier. Those things might be toxic.

So, I'm back to my original weight and having to watch what I eat again. Just when I was getting used to stuffing my face full of whatever I could find, my dogs don't run away anymore and the no-elevator client cut back to twice a week.

I had a hard time buttoning my pants today, which means my transition from high calorie food to low calorie but still high energy food isn't going as smoothly as I thought. But then again, it's summer and all of my shorts have drawstrings, so it's easy to see how I could be fooled.

Don't be a dog walker. You'll get skinny, then get fat again. It's not worth it.