DORA AND STACEY

Last year was a rough one for Stacey Cleveland of Penticton, B.C. A minor stumble in a race, turned out to have significant repercussions. “It felt like there was a pop right below my butt during the race. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, but then an mri showed a torn hamstring,” Cleveland explains.

After rehabbing that injury, she suffered another injury in an innocuous scenario, slipping on a patch of ice jogging to a yoga class resulted in a sacrum fractured in three places. Three months after that, Cleveland was bowled over by an excited pup in a dog park, resulting in a torn meniscus.

For a runner, it’s hard to imagine a more trying year than that. Cleveland is building her post-injury mileage up now and is back on the trails with her favourite running pal, rescue dog Dora. For Cleveland and her husband, adopting was less of a leap into the unknown than it is for some. Cleveland had volunteered her time as a dog walker for various shelters for years before adopting Dora. “It was still overwhelming picking her up. I drove to Washington State and back in a snowstorm to pick her up. She was bouncing all over the car while I was hunkered down behind the wheel. It was quite the drive,” Cleveland recalls.

“Dora wasn’t that fit when we got her. She’d spent most of her life tied to a tree, with not a lot of care or physical exercise. I just wanted to get her out and loving life again, so we built up her tolerance really slowly. You’d never know now though. We can be out for a six-hour run and she’ll still sprint after the random chipmunk that goes by,” says Cleveland.