This is a thing I don’t think Lady Mary ever did at Downton Abbey. Get up super early, before even her servants, with only a banana for breakfast, like, ONLY A BANANA, and putting on the day before’s muddy pants. Because, why? They’re just going to get more muddy again. And Servant Anna probably absconds with any trousers dripping in mud instead of tossing them in the bedroom corner, taking them downstairs to Mr. Bates for transportation to the laundress. If Lady Mary did have this inclination to get her bony ass out of bed, it would have been a muddy tweed day, no sparkle headbands worn down low nearly to the bridge of one’s nose this early in the morning.

Not being Lady Mary, though, not even close, I put on a wooly hairband thing over my hairnest that covers up where I couldn’t get the comb through. No time for actual ready to look at hair. If I cut my hair into her bob, perhaps the hair troubles wouldn’t follow me. But it’s just another thing to do, that isn’t running dogwalks. Because we need to get up there early, up the hill and up the hill again, to the grassy field, where the dogwalk lives. We rent the dogwalk and it’s field of green from my friend Kathleen, who is also teaching her young border collie to do the same thing as me. Lady Mary, I can totally guarantee you, never taught her dog a running dogwalk. Nor had to rent a thing. The upstairs class, probably not all that fun. But excellent access to super nice linens and wovens.

David Bowie, I’m pretty sure didn’t teach a running dogwalk. He did like a million things a million times more amazing, so for this I have nothing but admiration, but our hero moment, me and Banksy just for one day, is we’ve figured out for how to get her running across a shoulder high bridge, at 100mph, and always plant her feet to the yellow as they fly by on gossamer wings made of sparkle polyester rhinestone doghair.

This ain’t rock and roll. This is genocide. Or not either. I am just teaching my dog to run her fluffy self off across a narrow, portable bridge. But I can’t help saying this today, over and over and over. THIS AIN’T ROCK AND ROLL. THIS IS GENOCIDE. Running dogwalks are a sickness inside my mind, and they always need a mantra, a menu of the day scrawled on my rustic chalkboard plopped out front of my rustic barnwood paneled restaurant where I can’t afford to eat. I’m so happy because today I’ve found my friends, they’re in my head. There are people in my head explaining this. David Bowie, Lady Mary, and Silvia my Slovenian Wood Nymph.

This is a lot more complicated than you might think. We have a leader, the tireless Silvia Trkman, who teleports detailed instructions from the command center in her house in Slovenia via the internet. After my U.S. dollar paypal’s been converted to euros with the tap of a button, all day, she stays glued to her screen in the control tower in the mother ship and waits for incoming video transmissions. Ground control to Major Silvia, may God’s love be with you. Because you are in there watching videos all day and all night of dogs of all shapes and sizes trying to run across the planks and hit the yellow. And send coded messages back out across the globe of how to get the feet to better stride over the yellow. RF hits. The rear feet. Whenever possible, in extension, the rear feet must separate and glide through that small patch of yellow at the bottom.

It’s simple, really. We have a careful morse code of dogwalk words strung together to explain the footfalls and how to achieve them. From Slovenia into my phone and back, nine hours of time but instructions arrive instantly, the magic of space travel for words and images. When my sun is coming up, the sun in Slovenia is going down. Bright and early, I head up the mountain to run. Underemployment happened to me some months back, which for RDW, a fantastic gift. For purchasing valuable minutes on the dogwalk, not so much, but for time to go in a bit later to work, fantastic. You get what you ask the universe for, right? All those slacker days of wishing for retirement came raining down on me in one fell swoop. It was perhaps a signal of time to return to the life of an artist? I didn’t really know a mental illness would take over, the desire to see her dive over the second apex on stride four, then do her signature weirdo footfall pattern down for that fifth stride over the yellow. FF FF RF FF to RF hit.

That’s the thing about Lady Mary. Doesn’t she even see it’s her moment? All those idle hours spent wandering around on the grounds or sitting in the great hall sipping tea. She could be scaling the castle walls and stenciling on a giant upraised fist. Or could be out there working on the harder exit turns. Maybe it’s so very bourgeoisie to be striving for huge pockets of a day to run around with a dog, but so be it. I’m never going to be the Lady of the Manor. But my dog will hit the yellow.

When it’s finished, the momentous task accomplished, what will I have to show for it? Will it keep me propped up in retirement, the way a prosperous hog farm might, or a pension, or a fat piece of real estate, terra firma under my feet? Is it a legacy that will be remembered by all, advancing us through culture and cutting across fashion, art and social norms? It’s a dog running across a bridge. But it’s our golden years, true that life may, be, taking us nowhere. But those minutes of the running, me and Banksy who nobody can catch, that’s our luck.

Run for the shadows, nothing’s gonna stop you in these golden years. David Bowie might have liked this.