It snowed a lot last night. I can't remember a time in the 10 years we’ve been living in Dusseldorf that it snowed this often, this much. Especially this year it seems to have hit the bull’s eye as long as the dates are concerned: A white Christmas preceding a white New Year, all holidays in powder snow.

After spending countless hours in the snow the last 2 days and taking melting snow’s muddy legacy for granted, I was pretty sure to stay home on this very last day of the official holiday. But the first look in the morning from our bedroom window told another story. Almost thirty centimeters of fresh snow covered our terrace, all white. Again. Sun is shining. Again.

My biking gear hadn’t recovered from yesterday’s long ride, so I decided to do something else: Take Sammy, our dog, to a [long] walk. I am not a dog guy, that is for sure, I never was, but recently I’ve been discovering odd similarities between the dog and myself, so we started developing an interesting friendship.

Sammy is 7 dog years old, so according to a dog age calculator, he must be something around 40 of our age. That alone reveals the best bet: Although both of us share a mellow age, we both behave like premature idiots. And two premature idiots are two too much for a sunday morning walk.

Like the common breed of maverick mountain bikers craving desperately for recognition, who relentlessly abuse even the shortest ride for a race, the lamest hill for a villainous attack, only to demonstrate who’s the most wicked sheriff in town, we misused a beautiful sunday morning stroll to a crushing 2-hour hike, full of nasty sprints, vicious tricks and yes, massive retaliation. 

After the first 15 minutes it was clear, that one of us was going to drop dead somewhere on the trail, but all we were interested in, was to see who it would be. As we reached McDonald’s to buy the sunday morning Latté, I was the first to cross the line. My face so soaking wet from sweating, the lady on the teller had to offer me a glass of water to cool myself down.

“Can I get a cup of coffee and 6 chicken nuggets, please? No deals, no sauce or whatsoever, just the nuggets.”

So I got my coffee, he his nuggets. I must admit, the lady was a bit offended, the customers on the line too, as they momentarily realized that I was disgracing McFood. They all saw Sammy’s 3 foot long tongue roaming out of his slimy mouth and his evil-smiling face. Before all Super-Size-Me’s freaked out however, we were long gone.

Sammy got his revenge very soon though, he was now deploying his dirtiest tricks. As I leaned down to him to put on his leash with my coffee mug in one hand, he shook his butt so hard, I dropped the mug. The half of the coffee was gone and he was pretty sure, that I wasn’t going go in there to buy another cup after what just happened. Nicely done!

Time for me to retaliate. I threw one of the hot nuggets into the air (this is the standard move for the dog to catch it on air), fished it with my mouth and ate the sucker instantly. Eat this!

We both didn’t realize at that very moment, that we were being watched furiously by the whole evil fast food army sitting by the window. It was a harrowing moment for me, as I knew, that my fast food career was unquestionably over.

On the way back home, we continued to exchange tender gestures as Sammy paced up for a final sprint. Golden retrievers are no masterminds but they surely can run. If it wasn’t for those tiny ice blocks on the trail which kept on creeping into his paws and caused him enough pain to give up, he’d be the undisputed winner of our sunday walk. This won’t be our last.

This is not going into my records as a training session, as I went for a snow ride right after we came back home, but it was by far the most demanding exercise of the week. 

There was once a tv ad, where two guys meet in a sauna. One of them sweating like hell with a modest beer belly asks the other guy who’s apparently top fit, how he manages to be so in such good shape. 

“Running?”

“Not really”

“Biking?”

“Uhm, no. I don’t have a bicycle”

“Gym, Yoga?”

“No”

“What do you do then, to be so good shape, man?”

“I have a dog!”

True that.