Poodle Sets Course Record in Saranac Lake Winter Carnival Fun Run

In her first-ever running race, the Standard Poodle Mersey Grrl set an apparent course record yesterday, finishing first in the annual Saranac Lake Winter Carnival Four-Mile Fun Run’s dog category. Her time of 38 minutes, 41 seconds is believed not only to be the fastest, but the first ever recorded by a dog in this race. 

Indeed the race only adopted a dog category when the race director responded yesterday to the question, “Can I run the race with my dog?” by saying, “You can do whatever you want.” 

While this was the first formal race for Mersey, she’s not inexperienced. She runs occasionally with her owner and her mini-poodle companion, Dusty. But those efforts are often interrupted for bathroom breaks and overwhelming attraction to environmental aromas. There was some question prior to the race as to whether she could maintain a steady pace for four straight miles. 

The answer to that question was a resounding: well, for the most part, yes! 

A major distraction occurred even as the race began, with Mersey clearly battling separation anxiety from Dusty and the other owner, who were spectators. She required a series of steady leash tugs to keep her striding in the right direction. But once settled in, she had only a few more lapses. In the first mile, she tried to climb a snowbank, perhaps chasing a long frozen slice of pizza or a better view of Lake Flower. Later, the race official standing in the road directing runners to turn left was almost certainly there awaiting her arrival, to pet her and possibly offer treats. These were among the handful of moments when a little leash work kept her on task. 

Mostly she kept up a steady trot amidst the several dozen human runners, looking straight ahead like she meant business and maintaining her pace even on the challenging hills in the course’s middle two miles. Occasionally she surged ahead of her owner, leading him into a faster pace than he’d bargained for. That was most pronounced in the final three quarters of a mile, when the finish line came into view across Lake Flower. She revealed a powerful kick and likely could have made up substantial ground if her owner had been able to keep pace. But it wasn’t all on him. Mersey also suffered a self-inflicted wound when she stopped just before the finish line to greet Dusty and the other owner. Another good leash tug got her over the line for her record finish. 

Mersey’s owner hopes that next year she can establish a new canine performance benchmark in some other Saranac Lake Winter Carnival competition. Perhaps the frying pan toss.

Mersey spots the other owner taking her photo, causing her to stop momentarily before crossing the finish line.

Following the race, Mersey posed for photos in the carnival’s ice palace with Dusty and the two owners, nudged up to strangers who expressed interest in her, and gladly hopped back into the car for the ride home, where, unencumbered by her auspicious performance, she took a nap. 

Race photos by Claire Marziotti. Ice Palace photo taken by the person who was next to us in the photo line.

In Search of Golf Balls

My life this summer has been measured in golf balls. Not strokes, not scores, but the physical balls themselves. 

I’ve been living next to a golf course, which often provides part of the route for my once- and sometimes twice-daily dog walks. I usually take to the course only when it’s nearly empty—during rainstorms or at the end of the day—and I stay in the roughs near the edges, where we are unlikely to disturb anyone’s play.

And that’s where lost golf balls live. 

Like an Egg in a Nest

I found my first lost ball on a day when the course was busier than I expected, so I went deeper into the rough than usual, where the vegetation wasn’t so much manicured as curated to be wild. And suddenly there at my feet was a bright-white golf ball sitting on a tuft of grass like an egg in a nest. So what do you do? You pick it up and take it home. 

As similar finds began occurring with some regularity on my golf course forays, I developed a taste for the hunt. Whether on a leisurely walk or a more demanding run, my eyes scanned all the places balls might go to elude their owners. 

And that’s pretty much everywhere. The other day I found one in the middle of the 11th fairway. No one was around. I checked several times in both directions before picking it up. From a distance I thought it was a piece of paper someone dropped, but being in search mode I took a closer look. Who abandons their ball in the middle of the fairway?

Often I now choose my route to optimize my harvest. The water-hazard hole has been especially generous. One day it coughed up three balls—two visible in shallow water a few inches from shore, the other in plain sight over a little bluff. Two holes over I found a fourth ball plopped next to the paved golf cart trail, thereby establishing my current one-walk record, a four-ball day that I’ve now achieved twice. 

And I keep finding more. The platter my wife and I have used to contain our collection no longer suffices. We’ve moved to a bowl, and that is rapidly filling.

The Lost-Ball Epidemic

It got me thinking. How many balls does a typical golfer lose? An average of 1.3 per 18 holes, according to an article on Found Golf Ball. That adds up to an estimated 300 million each year in the United States alone, according to Wikipedia, or about 25 percent of the annual total of balls manufactured worldwide. 

Stranded golf balls decompose at a rate I’ve seen estimated at between 50 and 1,000 years. Some believe they may pose an environmental threat, as many contain small amounts of zinc, for example, which is toxic to marine life. Still the amount is small, and no study has made the case definitively that lost golf balls are a hazard. 

In any event, many lost balls are recovered. In 2010, Knetgolf.com, which now directs you to LostGolfBalls.com, sold more than 20 million reclaimed golf balls, per a contemporary New York Times article. 

And as of this summer, an additional cache can be found at my house. 

Photo at the top of the page: My found golf ball collection as of Aug. 11, 2023.

Free Advice From Our Dog Mersey

This morning, our dog Mersey did what she always does when she sees us grab the harness before a walk. She ran away.

That’s unusual in dog world. Most dogs see you give even the faintest sign that a walk is nigh, and they bound to the door tail a-wagging. And Mersey does love her walks, it’s the harness she claims to dislike. We use it because she can be a pretty strong puller, and the harness helps us control that. When we first introduced it to her as a puppy, she objected, shaking and pawing at it when we first put it on. But in a few moments she’d adjust to it and have a normal walk. After a few days even the early discomfort disappeared. Only the I-won’t-let-you-put-the-harness-on rebellion ritual remained. 

She can pull if off because our ground floor has a circular layout from front-door foyer to kitchen to family room and back to foyer. Mersey takes advantage of that when she sees the harness, moving quickly to the open doorway between the kitchen and the family room, then watching us to see which way we’re going. Of course we try to preempt this by surprising her with the harness before our hand has been tipped that it’s walk time. But sometimes we fail. If both my wife and I are involved, we’ll take opposite directions to close in on her. Another option is to shut the door between the kitchen and family room to create a dead end. As we close in, Mersey recognizes she’s trapped and is pretty quick to concede, standing still while we slip on and snap in the harness. 

Then she’s an obedient girl, scurrying to the door in exaggeratedly awkward form, head down, legs stiff. At the door she sits unmoving until the door opens, when she magically transforms back into her public persona as a fluid, shapely, upbeat greeter of all comers. 

She likes to play games, but she knows when the jig is up.

She can be available free of charge to advise our lame-duck President Trump should he need help in such matters. 

Photo at top of page: By conceding to put on her harness this morning, Mersey was able to enjoy peak foliage and unusual 70-degree temperatures in Rochester’s Highland Park. 

I Reveal My Trick For Teaching My Dog to Run With Me

Experts say dogs shouldn’t go distance running until their bones are well formed at about one year of age (some say even older). So I waited until after our Standard Poodle, Mersey, had her first birthday before going on a sustained run with her. 

That noted, I prepared her in small ways for the big day. 

First, thanks mostly to my wife, Claire, Mersey got plenty of exercise as a puppy, typically two sessions a day of walks and / or play dates with other puppies. And when I walked her, I occasionally broke into a trot, testing her and letting her know to expect more of this in her future. She responded well, immediately picking up on the new pace and matching it, like it was a game, and she wanted to play.

But that was the extent of her preparation. So when I took her out for her first run a few weeks after her first birthday, I was leaping into the unknown. Would she enjoy it, sticking with me and bounding along like we were having a great adventure? Or would she pull me in all directions, stop every 50 feet for an intensive sniff, or lag behind like I was dragging her through a torture chamber eventually pulling to a stop and stubbornly refusing to move? In a moment, I would find out. 

We began by following our usual walking pattern, bursting out the door and down the driveway along with our other dog and her usual walking partner, Dusty, who my wife was going to take separately. The familiar pattern changed at the end of the driveway, when we broke into a trot while my wife and Dusty walked in the opposite direction. 

Mersey was confused. She twisted and turned, trying to understand why they were walking the other way. After several twists, we were down the block and they were out of sight. She turned again as if to verify her fate then resettled into her new pace. My pace. 

This is a dog who can pull intensely for long stretches of a walk. But now the rope leash was limp. She stayed close, sometimes sliding slightly ahead, sometimes slightly behind. I cheated on my usual responsible monitoring of the street and sidewalk where my feet were landing to steal glimpses of her. She seemed to be enjoying it, her head moving from side to side, focusing here, then there, watching the world roll by more quickly than usual, taking it all in. She’s an observer. In the car, watching our TV, sitting in the backyard. And now, on a run. 

We ran five miles that day. She kept pace with me nearly the whole way, a feat she has repeated on every run since. 

I used my phone to shoot this video of Mersey keeping nearly perfect pace with me along the Genesee River path in Rochester, N.Y. 

Yes, our runs have been disrupted now and then by wildlife and other distractions. But there’s no denying it: she’s a natural. I’m amazed each time I run with her that she keeps perfect pace with me for minutes on end. And I did nothing to train her. She arrived at her first birthday running ready. I just guided her out the door. I imagine there’s a method to train a dog to run with you. But this time at least, I didn’t need it.