Walking With A Fear of Dogs

Walking With A Fear of Dogs

Byrichard

I walk every single day, whether it’s raining, windy, snowing, a heat wave and more. I like heatwaves because dog walkers usually stay in. We live in an age and society where fear of dogs is not respected. Yesterday I was on a walk and i saw two big dogs. One was on a leash and the second was free to roam. That freedom to roam encouraged me to divert my route to go through a muddy forest.


I ran by the side of a muddy field today to avoid more dogs. The thing about dogs is that they come up to you if they are not held on a leash and you have to fight with all of your will power not to lift your arms as that will trigger them to think you’re playing, when in reality you’re terrified.


Dog walkers think that we are strange for fearing dogs, but dog walkers don’t understand how to read that people are afraid of their dogs. They just allow their dogs to look at us, approach and more. I was once in the middle of a field, with a dog running towards me and I froze. I didn’t move until the owner called it back. On another route a dog threatened me two or three times. In the end I barked insults at me, for barking at me. That dog chased me into at least one field before I stopped walking that route.


If I finished a PhD In Finland I could walk around with a sword, since every PhD graduate gets a sword. Imagine if people saw me walking towards them with a sword. “Oh but you should not walk with a sword, it scares people”. “Fantastic, I’m glad you brought it up, I feel the same way about your dogs.”


Why should people who are afraid of dogs be forced to overcome their fear of being attacked by a dog on every walk. I stopped walking all of the routes where people do not control their dogs. I often take a third, and sometimes even a fourth alternative on a walk, to avoid walking by dogs. I fear dogs. I’d rather walk an extra kilometre than confront my fear every single day.


It isn’t fair to force people who are afraid of dogs to overcome their fear on every walk they do.


When you go for a walk you always see “Attention au chien”, or other such warnings. People on the one hand warn you about dangerous dogs when you’re near their home, but then if you’re walking they bark, snarl and threaten you and you’re meant to be happy and relaxed. Dogs are sadistic creatures. I much prefer cats, foxes, and other animals. Either a cat wants to be petted, or it sprints away. Foxes see you, and run away. Chamois and other animals see you and run, if you get too close.


Dogs threaten us, but we’re meant to know how to be around them. It’s the only animal I encounter on walks that threatens me. Dogs are the only animals that approach when they are afraid.


And Finally


There is a rule on plenty of paths that says “Dogs must be kept on their leads” and owners do not obey this rule. The result is that dogs run towards me and I have to overcome my fear. In some cases I yell, Dogs respond to yelling. So do the owners. If you yell at a dog it stops approaching. The owner then calls the dog back. I wish dog owners would be considerate of people with a fear of dogs.

Garmin’s Auto Goal

Garmin’s Auto Goal

Byrichard

Garmin allows you to select the number of steps you want to take in a single day, or let it be set automatically. For a year or two I allowed the goal to set. The result is a step goal that fluctuated from 12,000 steps per day to 15,000 steps or more. This was fine, because I ignored it.


A few days ago I decided to set it to a fixed ten thousand steps a day. Many will say that the 10,000 steps per day doesn’t matter, and I agree. I took 21,000 steps today so I overshot the mark by a little.


I run every two days or so, and I walk for an hour and a half or more each day. Although I do this sometimes I undershoot the goal by a few hundred steps and the streak is lost. The streak, too, doesn’t matter, because it is meaningless. What I find interesting is the number of steps taken in a year. Once it was five and a half million. Now it is currently about 4.3 million.


These numbers too, don’t matter. If you run, or if you cycle you’re either making more effort, or your steps are not counted. In both cases the step count tells one story but other metrics tell another.


Last night I read about how you can increase your Vo2 max up to a certain point, and after that it doesn’t increase. What does change is your resistance to fatigue. You go from being able to run for 2 kilometres to being able to run for 2.3 kilometres, and more.


Today I walked for two hours in drizzle. I passed by two Camino stamp opportunities and collected them in a booklet that is not designed for this use. I collected them as a curiousity, and to give this walk a different purpose.

Dry Weather, Clean Shoes

Dry Weather, Clean Shoes

Byrichard

We’re having dry weather which means that I have clean shoes, once again. They cut the grass recently but rather than see greenery we see yellow. We’re in March and it already looks as if we’re un June/July, with how dry the landscape is. The sides of the road, where it was once muddy, is now dry and hard. We are in summer dry weather despite being the first of march.


It’s windy and cold at the moment. You want to wear a good hat, good gloves, and to have layers that stop the wind from blowing through to chill us.


It was cold enough to kill the airpods after an hour of exposure to the weather today. On a warm day the airpods last for two or three hours. On a cold day they last for half an hour to an hour. With walks that last from one hour to one and a half hours I usually never run out of batteries. It’s a sign of cold weather that the batteries last less time than the walk.


In other news twitter failed again today for at least an hour or two. With mobile devices I tried to refresh the feed but saw nothing. I could still post and see replies, but I couldn’t read new tweets. Now that we expect Twitter to fail on a regular basis we don’t feel the same angst as before. It is unimportant.


And Finally – Mud season


At least one Londoner loves the mud because it absorbs his steps and lowers the pain he felt when walking on tarmac and other hard surfaces. I am puzzled by one recommendation. “Have a towel ready”. I know that football players have a brush and running water to clean their shoes. The idea of using a towel is new to me. I can think about it, next time it rains, in a few months from now.

GPS Accuracy Contrast Between the 45s and Instinct

GPS Accuracy Contrast Between the 45s and Instinct

Byrichard

Yesterday afternoon I was looking at the GPS track for a run I did with the 45s and I was struck by how wide of the mark it was, compared to the same run with the Garmin Instinct. With the Garmin instinct the GPS track fits like a rail to the satellite and road map. With the Garmin Forerunner 45s it is quite a way out.


How Big Is The Difference?


With the Garmin Instinct GPS track you can see so precisely that you can tell which side of the road I was running on, as well as when I switched from one side to the other. The GPS track is highly aligned with the walk or run.


In contrast with the Forerunner 45 the track is a few meters it. It shows you as running through trees and buildings, instead of along the road. It’s when you zoom in that you see the flagrant difference in accuracy between the two devices.


Does It Matter?


Now that I notice the difference I don’t think that it really matters. I need to check whether when it is GPS alone or GPS and Glonass, whether it is more accurate than GPS and Magellan. I think the GPS chip is cheaper, and that’s what affects accuracy.


Working On Fitness


My reason for running is to improve my fitness, according to fitness apps, and with the Garmin Forerunner 45s I get a measure of my vo2max and how it is progressing with each run. I don’t get that data with the Instinct.


And Finally


If you want to create a GPS route for others to follow use the Garmin instinct because it will give a clear, accurate route, but if you’re just running and tracking for fun then the Forerunner 45s is fine. Sometimes the cheap option is fine.

A Walk In The Snow

A Walk In The Snow

Byrichard

Today I went for a walk in the snow. It wasn’t snowing and I wasn’t in a blizzard but there was snow on the ground. I like when it snows because the landscape looks different. It reminds us of a different age, of old post cards, and a time when the planet was cooler.


A snow covered path with footprints


The season has changed. Visually tomorrow or the next day the snow will be gone and the landscape will look ordinary. The biggest change will be the temperature. I have started walking with insulated mugs of hot tea again. It’s not that I’m drinking them, but rather that I have the drink in case I get thirsty during the walk.


As I write this blog post I can hear snow sliding off of the roof. When it snows the world is quieter in the morning, and then as soon as the sun shines, or the snow turns to rain, then the snow that accumulated on the roof starts to slide, and you hear as it makes its way down.


Yesterday, during my daily walk, I came across a pile of salt. I stepped in it, to see whether it would dry the mud on my shoes and make it fall off. Unfortunately it didn’t so I need to clean that salt off as fast as possible, before it eats away at my shoes. They were preparing everything for the snow that fell overnight. They were out with snowploughs today, to push a few snowflakes off of paths, before the rain.


During this walk I didn’t cross many people, if any. It’s cold, it’s dark, it was rainy, and the roads were soggy. What you don’t see is that I was wearing my hiking boots today. Such shoes make sense in this weather, to keep the feet dry. It also serves to clean the mud.


That’s it for today.

Stormy Skies Near Nyon
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Stormy Skies Near Nyon

Byrichard

The weather was finally dynamic today. The storm warnings were flashing towards Hermance, on the French side of the lake. This gave a nice contrast between the yellow of the Colza fields and the dark threatening clouds behind.


At moments I thought that rain would begin to fall but luckily the doppler radar, and my instincs were correct, so I did not get drenched in rain or pelted with hail. At one point it did feel as though hail could be a possibility.



In the last week or two I have cycled around 150 kilometres, which isn’t bad. It could be better but single rides are around 49 kilometres. Once the ride was 49 kilometres but I saw that I could easily get an extra few meters to make it 50 so I made the effort. The second time I skipped.


My only trips into Geneva this year have been by bike, but only up from the lake, up the Via Appia and then back towards Vaud. No stops in Geneva itself so far. We are still in a pandemic and I am not going to play Pandemic Roulette, as I like to call it. I am not taking risks that are not worth taking.


If you are so inclined you can now listen to Germinal as podcasts via France Culture. Each episode is 28 minutes long so easy to slot into your day, either commuting or doing other things.


During the pandemic I spent a lot of time reading swiss news, to keep up with current affairs. Now that the Swiss government has decided to pretend that the pandemic is over I have stopped reading the RTS info site. There is not much value when they do not provide relevant news and information.


I will update this blog erratically because it’s hard to know when I will or will not be inspired. Today’s blog post is mainly as an excuse to share photographs.

Confined by Freedom

Confined by Freedom

Byrichard

Some of us are confined by freedom. By this I mean that as society is opened up, as people are told that they don’t need to wear masks, that they don’t need to self-isolate and that they don’t need to show covid passes, so the freedom of others is taken away. During a pandemic there are two types of people. Those that hear the word pandemic and think “I need to self-isolate, wear a mask, and vaccinate.” and the others who think “Why should I do what the state tells me to do? I am my own person.”


Quarantines have already been shortened so people who could be contagious are allowed to move through society freely. At the same time there is discussion about not requiring people to wear masks, returning to work and not requiring covid passes.


If this was in a vacuum we could say “well, let’s see what happens.” except that we are not. We see that Denmark has gone from the BA-1 wave to the BA-2 wave. We see that in England, France, Switzerland and the US the number of sick children is going up. We also see that hospitalisations are increasing. If we look at a map of Europe now with levels of spread of the virus then the whole of Europe is dark red with serious Covid outbreaks.


This is the worst possible time to reopen society, because the virus is already virulent, and governments are not trying to contain it. All of the indicators above show that we have a choice to make for this spring and summer. Do we self-isolate and spend a third summer in solitude, or do we play pandemic roulette, hope for the best, and see whether we fall sick? I would prefer not to play pandemic roulette personally, so, for now, the summer will be solitary.