My wife ran a 5k this morning for the Williamson County Humane Society. She did it in around 35 minutes which is pretty good, but she's got normal human sized legs, so whatever. The real story here is our dog, Master Samwise the Brave. With his impressive 6 inch stride he walked (and even ran some of) a mile with a billion other dogs.
To be honest this isn't really all that amazing. He's very short, but he likes to go for walks and he's no stranger to walking several miles at a time. He's a herding dog, they're built to work long hours, people just assume he can't go very far because his legs are so short. I was more impressed by how well he behaved around all the other dogs and people. After we adopted him from the Humane Society two years ago we learned that he had some pretty serious fear and fear aggression issues. He was scared of everything and if he feels backed into a corner he'll attack. It's made us pretty nervous dog owners in some situations, but over the last two years he's improved leaps and bounds.
He's normally pretty well behaved for us, but around other dogs he can get really excitable and sometimes around people he doesn't know, especially with children, he becomes scared and anxious. We were a little concerned with how he would deal with all the new people and dogs at the 5k, but it's something he needs to be exposed to to help him get over his fears and I was keeping a close eye on him. Once he moved past his initial excitement and nervousness he did really well. During and after the walk he tended to mostly ignore the other dogs and he enjoyed getting pet by anyone who would offer. He did so well that I gave him one of the medals they were handing out but he didn't really seem to care.
