The Dog Still Gets Her Walks

No matter what the lockdown restrictions are, the dog still has to be walked twice a day. It isn't just about exercise. The dog toilets outdoors and it's not fair to curb that. For her mental health and healthy bowel movement, each walk has to hit a minimum of 1.6 km. Whether I run that distance or stroll along, it depends on how I feel at that hour of the day. 

There're those playfields cordoned off. No entry it stated. No gatherings. We don't intentionally step in there. We heed the rules, but hey, if the dog is sniffing, then we gingerly step in to let her sniff and pee/poop, or use it to quickly walk across the field to get to the other side. We can't let the dog off-leash anyway, so one way is to let her merrily trot along on the grass and the humans stay on the pavement. Hurhurhur. That's totally playing by the rules. Enforcement officers usually don't bother us when they see us walking along with the dog or stopping to give her water, and not stopping to play. Also, there're rarely people in the vicinity or they're really far away in another part of the field, so it's not a big deal. 

On week days, the man usually takes the morning walks, and I take the evenings. We still do that now since work calls can get in the way of the dog's walk timings. She doesn't usually get us both walking her unless it's on the weekends. But now, it's like an extended weekend if I don't have to do chores in the morning and the man doesn't have to jump on a 9am call. We can walk the dog longer, and then pick up brunch somewhere. We can afford to spend more time with the dog since we don't have to do the work-office commute or rush to various appointments. She's happiest when she walks with us both. 

On our walks, we keep to a 5km-radius in the neighborhood. (Since our country's PM personally asked us to exercise within our neighborhoods.) Unless some bright sod decides to impose restrictions and define 'neighborhood' to within a 3km-radius. Especially if we're stuck in Phase 1 forever or be banished back to a second 'circuit breaker' later in the year. Singapore is wayyyy too small to sustain this level of population density. Pandemics will return again and again, and if we don't find sufficient greens and space in the city, we're all going to be prisoners at home.