There’s about a two-mile circuit around my neighborhood that I jog every day. Or try to jog every day. Or at least intend to jog every day. This week I’ve managed to do it three times, motivated by the couple of pounds I gained last week at Disney World. (Which was a dismaying discovery considering we were on our feet walking the entire time we were there; but I guess we took in an obscene amount of calories with the Disney Dining Plan.)

Anyway, I guess I should preface this story by saying that I don’t actually jog the whole two miles. There’s a big stretch that’s uphill, so usually by the time I’ve made it up that hill, I need to walk a bit. If I hazarded a guess, I probably walk about 1/4 of my two miles.

Yesterday when I went out for my jog, big dark clouds were building up in the area, and a few drops of rain were falling every now and then. But the time I made it to the place where I usually start to walk a bit, it had begun to lightning. So, not fancying becoming a fried Tater I did not walk, and I was quite impressed with myself when I reached my own street, having jogged the whole way.

Until I realized that this meant I can jog two miles, and therefore must do it from now on.

Thus determined, I set out this morning under an overcast sky, pretending that at any moment it would come a gullywasher and I needed to haul my butt home.

As it turned out, when I crested the hill where I’m normally tempted to walk, something else inspired me to run like hell.

I was watching a cop pull someone over for speeding, when I heard a dog barking from across the street. Reluctantly tearing my eyes from some other person’s misfortune, I turned to see a dog running through a front yard, aimed at me. Not being a dog person, I couldn’t tell you what kind of dog it was. I can tell you it wasn’t huge. Or even big, really. Maybe one of the larger kinds of terriers? I didn’t really care what kind of dog it was — I just wanted to get the heck away from it. (When I was about three, a spastic dog wrapped me up in his chain and scared me half to death, and I flashed back to that when I saw this dog running full-speed ahead.) So I ran full-speed ahead, thinking I could outpace this dog, and not thinking he’d cross the street anyway, as I was coming up on an intersection with lots of cars stopped at a light.

I was wrong.

About the street-crossing and the outpacing.

No sooner had I purposed to outrun the dog, when I felt the nip of dog teeth and the scratch of claws against the back of my calf. Fortunately I didn’t feel any pain.  (And an awkward glance down at my calf revealed that no skin was broken.)

I spun around and shouted at the dog in my best authoritative voice. “Go home! Go away!”

The dog kept barking. Where was that cop when you needed him? What was writing a speeding ticket when he could be rescuing a sweaty young woman from the jaws of a not particularly deadly terrier? Out the corner of my eye, I saw a car at the stop light, the window rolled down and both driver and passenger gawking out at me. I couldn’t tell if they pitied my plight, or were amused by it, if they were sorry for me, or for the dog. I didn’t stick around to find out, because with another shout and a kick of my foot (in the air, in the dog’s general direction, not actually into the dog), the dog backed off, and I darted off — and not at a jog, because what do you know but that stupid dog came after me again? At least he stopped at the corner and came no further, just kept barking.

Looking back, I probably should have gone back to the house where I’d first seen the dog and asked if they knew their dog was out (if it was even theirs), but I’m not really that good of a citizen when I’m being chased by an animal.

I think in the future I would prefer the threat of being struck lightning to keep me running.