My dog is a rockstar.

Suzy is a 15-year-old (as estimated by her vet, no one really knows how old she is exactly) beagle that I adopted a few years ago when I first moved here. Also, she is basically clinically insane. I mean it—the dog has issues. Sometimes she spins absentmindedly in circles while lying down in order to scratch her belly, and she grunts a lot and stares at people. Often she will wake me up by breathing on my face. No barking or whining, she just stares and breathes until I wake up. It’s very disturbing.

Incidentally, Suzy is the reason I first started losing weight. I got a dog because I live alone and need companionship and didn’t want people to accuse me of being a crazy cat lady. Suzy is overweight herself, by about 15 pounds, and so when I adopted her we started walking regularly in the evenings. We still walk about a mile and a half together each evening, but try as we might she doesn’t seem to be able to lose more weight. She seems happy though, so I’m not worried. As our walks progressed in the beginning I saw some success with my weight loss and it motivated me to continue and adopt other forms of exercise as well. Now when I go for a run people in town—who I met originally because they were fascinated by the ancient wonder that is Suzy—often say hello. One would assume that the dog benefits my healthy lifestyle. Even when I don’t feel like exercising I never skip our daily walk. I tried once and she looked so sad that I felt terribly guilty and we went anyway. Even if we are just able to walk a few blocks she flips out with extreme amounts of joy.

Sometimes, though, she likes to distract me. I’ve mastered the art of pushups with a dog involved—sometimes she stares, other times she snorts and tries to lick my face, and once she decided to see if she could jump on my back. She’s a feisty little thing. Last night I was “diligently” completing a workout from the 30 Day Shred (if by “diligently” you mean answering my phone when Shawna called me during the middle of it… the pause button is just too accessible!) and Suzy was wandering about the house.

All of a sudden she appeared at my side, raised up on her back legs and started jumping around while staring at the screen. That’s right, my dog does workout DVDs with me. It was so hilarious that I started laughing and gave her a treat so that I wouldn’t bruise her ego too much.

I bet that was her plan all along. She’s so manipulative.