By 
Waffle turned six on New Year’s Day and I can safely say, without a doubt, he hasn’t lost one scintilla of his youthful exuberance.
The same cannot be said for his curmudgeonly owner, however. He is set to turn 50 in a month’s time and I can safely say, without a doubt, his youthful exuberance is but a distant memory.
This sad fact was re-emphasised at the weekend when we decided to capitalise on the wintery weather and go a-sleighing on one of the many hills near our home. Hiking through powdery snow is energy-sapping at the best of times, but add in traipsing up and down a hill umpteen times, falling over and towing little humans on the sled – and it doesn’t take long before you’re yearning for the sofa.
“I fair got me steps in the day,” I said to myself as I plodded through yet more sugary snow on the way home. I was, in common parlance, rightly wrecked as I crested the hill at the house. And who was there to meet me, tongue-lolling and tail a-wag, but the Duracell Bunny himself.
If I had covered a couple of miles that day, Waffle covered twice that distance – if not more. He never stopped. He ran down the hill beside the speeding sleigh and by the time the sleigh’s occupants were still picking themselves up and brushing snow out of their faces, Waffle was back at the top of the hill again ready for the next run. He even sloped off by himself for a while to attend to his business (don’t eat yellow snow, kids!) and then went a-sniffing around the field hoping, perhaps that some Good Samaritan might appear with a treat.
By the time we made it back to the house I was, in common parlance, ready for the bed. Waffle though, decided he would chase the blackbird round the garden for a while, seeing as how the yellow-beaked fiend didn’t seem to know his place.
Back in the house, I was barely able to extricate sodden feet from wellies whereas Waffle decided he’d like to have the zoomies and thereupon embarked on a canine version of the bleep test. Into the living room, out of the living room. Into the kitchen, out of the kitchen. Down the hall, up the hall.
“You’re making me even more tired just watching you, dawg,” I told him. But he paid me no mind.
Into the living room, out of the living room…
And the best of it is, I’m habitually more active on a daily basis than he is. Waffle’s fitness regime involves walking around the house and scratching himself from-time-to-time before lying up on the sofa and snoring.
And perhaps this was the most surprising element of the whole experience. Whereas I, the habitual runner, couldn’t hike up and down a hill a dozen times without feeling as though I’d completed an ultra marathon, Waffle, the habitual sloth, thought nothing of running from one end of the day to the next – without any perceived exertions taking a flinch out of him.
Maybe that’s the secret of it. While I’m counting steps, miles and years, Waffle is just running for the sheer joy of running. No targets, no tracking apps, no aching knees; just snow, speed and the next adventure.
Still, when the day comes that Waffle finally slows down, I’ll be there to comfort him (from a seated position of course) reminding him that the sofa is a fine place to sit and watch the world go by, and that youthful exuberance, like snow, has a habit of melting away whether you chase it or not.
