Fireside Books: Fireside Books in Parksville and The BookWyrm in Port Alberni offer used books at just $5 or less. Both locations make growing your personal library easier than ever. New and used books, and so much more. Order online at firesidebooks.ca and pick up at either location. Details are available online. Ask about returning books for a book credit. Two locations, one amazing adventure in browsing.
The Ballad of Peter & Gracie: Peter and his dog Gracie ran through fields so wide, with dreams in their pockets and stars as their guide. Every day's an adventure under the open sky; in their world of stories, time just flies by.
Peter McCully: Gracie's annual checkup was always a production. First, there was the car ride, which Gracie loved. Then there was the waiting room, which smelled like other dogs and made her eyes go very wide and her tail go very fast. Then there was the scale. The scale was where things got complicated.
Dr. Patel was the kind of veterinarian who talked to animals as if they could understand every word, which Peter secretly thought they probably could. She crouched down to Gracie's level, scratched her behind both ears at once, and said in a perfectly cheerful voice, "Gracie, my friend, you have put on a little bit of weight since last year."
Gracie's tail wagged.
"She needs more exercise," Dr. Patel said, straightening up and looking at Peter's mum. "She's not overweight, nothing to worry about, but American Eskimo dogs are an active breed. They need a good run most days to stay in their best shape. More than neighbourhood walks, she'd benefit from something that really gets her moving."
Peter's mum nodded and wrote notes in her phone. Peter looked at Gracie. Gracie was sitting on the exam table looking extremely pleased with herself, as if the conversation were about somebody else entirely.
"Gracie," Peter said, "you have to exercise more."
Gracie yawned.
"That's what I thought," Peter said.
On the drive home, he was quiet, thinking. His mum put on the radio, but he barely listened. He was doing something important. He was making a plan.
That evening, Peter sat at the kitchen table with a piece of paper and a red marker. At the top, he wrote, in his best printing, "Gracie's Exercise Plan." Then he thought about it and added, "And Peter's, too."
Because here was the thing: if Gracie needed more exercise, Peter could be the one to give it to her. He was the one who walked her after school most days. He was the one who threw the ball in the backyard. It made sense that he would be her exercise buddy. And if he was being honest, he had been spending a lot of afternoons on the sofa lately, and maybe he could use a bit more moving around, too. He didn't write that part down.
He chewed on his marker and thought. The problem with exercise, the real problem, the reason people don't always do it, was that it sounded boring. Running around a track sounded boring. Doing sit-ups sounded boring. But Peter had noticed that when he was playing, actually playing, he never thought about the fact that he was running. He just ran. So the trick, he decided, was to make it feel like playing. He started writing.
Monday was the Rathtrevor Beach Run. They went in the late afternoon, when the tide was out and the sand was wide and firm. Peter unclipped Gracie's lead in the off-leash area, and she was gone before he even straightened up, a white streak going down the beach with her ears back and her tail streaming behind her like a flag.
Peter ran after her. He didn't catch her. He was never going to catch her, but that really wasn't the point. The point was the running: the cold, salty air filling his lungs, the sand firm under his feet, the gulls scattering ahead of them, and Gracie looping back to check on him and then shooting off again because she had identified something of extreme importance further down the beach that needed immediate investigation.
"What is it?" Peter panted, catching up to where she had stopped, her nose buried in a tangle of seaweed. Gracie looked up at him with seaweed on her nose.
"Right," Peter said. "Very important."
By the time they got back to the car, Peter's cheeks were pink and his legs felt good, tired in a way that was completely different from the tired of sitting still all day. Gracie flopped on the back seat with her tongue out and a look of deep satisfaction.
"That counts," Peter told her. "Monday, done."
Tuesday was the Coombs neighbourhood loop. Peter had mapped it out with his dad: a route through the back roads of Coombs that was almost exactly three kilometres if you went the long way, past the farm with the alpacas.
The alpacas were important. Gracie had opinions about alpacas. The first time they walked past the fence, Gracie stopped dead, stared at the nearest alpaca, and made a sound that Peter had never quite heard her make before: a sort of baffled, low-pitched woofle, as if she couldn't work out what category of creature she was looking at. The alpaca stared back with its enormous eyes and chewed slowly, unimpressed.
Gracie looked at Peter.
"It's an alpaca," Peter told her. "They're like fluffy llamas. They're harmless."
Gracie looked back at the alpaca, and the alpaca kept chewing. Gracie decided, apparently, that this was okay, and they walked on. After that, she pulled slightly harder on the leash whenever they got near the alpaca farm, as if she'd been waiting to see them again the whole loop.
Peter started timing how long the loop took them. The first week, it took thirty-four minutes. By the third week, it took twenty-eight.
"We're getting faster," Peter told Gracie. Gracie tossed her head as if she'd known that all along.
Wednesday was backyard games, which was Peter's favourite because he got to invent them. The first Wednesday, he set up an obstacle course using garden canes, hula hoops borrowed from the garage, and a tunnel made from a cardboard box with both ends cut off. Gracie went through the hula hoops immediately. She went through the cardboard tunnel immediately. She stopped at the garden canes, sniffed each one carefully, and then simply walked around them.
"That's not how an obstacle course works," Peter said.
Gracie sat down on the other side of the garden canes and looked at him cheerfully.
"Fine," Peter said. He removed the garden canes and replaced them with a row of flower pots, which Gracie stepped over with great dignity and apparent pride.
The second Wednesday, he invented a game called Catch the Sock, which was exactly what it sounded like, and which resulted in Peter running around the garden for twenty minutes while Gracie stayed one step ahead of him at all times, the sock clenched in her mouth, her whole body wiggling with delight.
The third Wednesday, he tried to teach her to jump over a low bar made from a broom handle balanced on two plant pots. She stepped over it the first time, went around it the second time, and the third time she knocked it down with her nose on purpose and then looked at Peter as if this was a great improvement to the activity. Peter laughed so hard he had to sit down on the grass, and Gracie climbed up on top of him.
"You're not very helpful," Peter told her.
"She sounds very helpful to me," his mum called from the kitchen window.
Thursday was the Englishman River Trail walk, which was the serious one. The trail wound through the forest along the river, with lots of roots and rocks, the air cool and green even in the warmest weather. It was the longest route on the plan, about forty-five minutes at a good pace, and Peter had added it because his dad said it was where you could sometimes spot river otters if you were very quiet. They never did spot an otter, but they saw a kingfisher, a blue-green dart over the water, so fast Peter almost missed it.
Thursdays were also the day Peter started noticing things he'd never paid attention to before: the way the light came through the trees in the afternoon, the way the river sounded different depending on where you stood, the way Gracie always stopped at the same mossy stump on the bend and sniffed it as if it were a newspaper, checking to see who had been there since last week.
"Who's been by, Gracie?" Peter would ask. She would finish her reading, look up at him, and they would walk on.
Friday was free choice day, which was Peter's second favourite day because it meant anything goes. Some Fridays, they went back to the beach. Some Fridays, they did the backyard games again, because Gracie had started waiting by the cardboard tunnel on Wednesday nights, apparently hoping for an encore. Once, they went to the off-leash area at the park in Parksville, and Gracie made a new friend: an enormous chocolate Labrador named Duke, who was about three times her size and very keen to play. Gracie accepted this with the air of someone doing a large dog a favour.
Once, on a rainy Friday when going out felt really miserable, Peter put on his raincoat and Gracie's little waterproof jacket, the yellow one she tolerated with great dignity, and they walked the Coombs loop in the rain anyway. It was unexpectedly one of the best walks they ever had. The road was empty. The air smelt like wet earth and fir trees and something clean and good. Gracie bounded through every puddle with enormous enthusiasm, which was unusual, because she generally preferred to be dry. The alpacas had retreated to their shelter, but one of them stuck its head out and watched them pass with mild curiosity.
"See?" Peter told Gracie, rain dripping from his hood. "Sometimes the rainy ones are the best ones."
Gracie shook a whole puddle's worth of water from her coat directly onto Peter's legs.
By the time Gracie's six-week checkup came around, something had changed. Not just Gracie, although Dr. Patel pronounced her in excellent shape and said her weight was exactly where it should be, and Gracie accepted the news with the same composure she brought to everything.
Something had changed for Peter, too. He hadn't noticed it happening, which was the strange part. He hadn't woken up one morning and decided to feel different. But somewhere between the Rathtrevor runs and the Coombs loops and the backyard games, he had started looking forward to it. The afternoons felt longer and better. He slept better. His legs were stronger; he could feel it on the hills.
And there was something else. He and Gracie had always been close, but six weeks of daily exercise had made them into something more: a proper team. She knew the routines now. On Monday afternoons, she sat by the door at three o'clock, looking hopeful. On Wednesdays, she went straight to the backyard and waited for Peter to bring out the equipment. She even stopped walking around the flower pots, mostly.
On the drive home from the vet, Peter's mum reached back and squeezed his knee. "You did a good thing," she said, "for both of you."
Peter looked at Gracie, who was curled up on the back seat beside him, her head resting on his leg, already asleep.
The Ballad of Peter & Gracie: Peter and Gracie, the finest of friends, with tales of wonder that never end. In the pages of books or the stars up above, they find their magic in laughter and love.
Fireside Books: Fireside Books in Parksville and The BookWyrm in Port Alberni offer used books at just $5 or less. Both locations make growing your personal library easier than ever. New and used books, and so much more. Order online at firesidebooks.ca and pick up at either location. Details are available online. Ask about returning books for a book credit. Two locations, one amazing adventure in browsing.
