How getting a dog 2 years ago changed my life as a video game addict

This is my first ever post on steemit so hello fellow steemians.

So...how did getting a dog change my life then? Well, to know that we have to go waaay back to 1978 (screen goes all wavey)..

Imagine a 12 year boy, rooted to the spot in Miami airport, staring in awe as he watches a guy playing Space Invaders for the 1st time. I was blown away, literally gobsmacked. I had played video games before but it was just batting a blob of pixels back and forth across an old black and white TV, an abstract concept at best. Finally, my turn came (there was a quite a queue), I peeled the 25c coin from my sweaty palm, popped it into the slot, pressed start and was transported into a different, more exciting world than the one I actually inhabited. A world where I was fighting off an alien invasion, I wasn't a small, quiet, slightly gangly youth anymore, I was a giant in this world. It would be a world that I would still be entranced with 36 years later as I closed in on my 48th birthday. I would play games on my days off, Call of Duty, Forza, Elder Scrolls, Tomb Raider, Battlefield and then I got addicted to Destiny...I could spend 10-12 hours a day playing this on my days off. The wife would even ask me "Is it Destiny Tuesday?" I would nod and disappear off to fight the Taken King on his dreadnought. I would read about video games, watched tutorials and other people playing on YouTube and even made my own videos, I was an addict.

Then, on June 22nd 2015, this little dude came into my life:

Suddenly, instead of going off to raid with my friends in Destiny on my Xbox, I was forced to take a small, over excitable ball of fur for a walk 3 times a day. How inconvenient, but as our friendship grew and he started to get bigger and able to walk further, I found myself looking forward to going out. I started to venture around my local area, looking for local parks, I'd walk to the pub (even that one 4 miles away!), try and find dog friendly beaches nearby. Just go outside and walk for the pure joy of it and it doesn't matter about the weather (the dog didn't care either).

Now don't get me wrong, this isn't a "I was fat and unfit till I got a dog" type of blog, I was a soldier previously, currently a firefighter and have been fit and in good shape my whole adult life. No, this is something else...

We joined the National Trust, we searched for places to go on the internet. On our days off, we'd bung the pooch into the car with our muddy boots and rain coats even if the sun was shining (we're English so the summer can mean torrential rain at times) and off we'd go. Tynemouth, Hardwick, Seaham (fish finger sandwiches), Headland, Ribblesdale, Derwent, Gibside, Ingleton, Saltburn to name just a few, places I didn't even know about 2 years ago. I developed a t-shirt tan, got soaked to the skin, walked in biting frost through magical woodland, got sand down the crack of my arse, burnt my bald spot, complained about my feet and generally had a whale of a good time.

What about the Taken King?

Well, I still game but not as much now and I take it far less seriously. It's broken down into 1-2 hour chunks, much more maneagable when you have a dog demanding attention. I've spent more time strolling along, dog lead in hand, chatting to the wife than I think I have in the whole 20 odd years before and y'know what? I wouldn't change back to the way it was before.

So that's how a small cockapoo called Dexter changed my life for the better

Though I have just built myself a VR capable PC with a sim racing rig and an Oculus Rift but that's a story for the next blog!

Marcus
Reformed Video Game Addict (maybe).