To say that I’m a reluctant exerciser is the understatement of the year — or at least of the last few months.

I walked that half marathon at the end of January, and haven’t moved since. Of course that’s not true. I feel like I’ve barely stopped moving. But you wouldn’t call any of it formal exercise. Til last week, when I started walking the dog.

I’ve never much seen the value in dog walking. Growing up, we always had two things: a family dog, and an enormous (by many standards) backyard. At least, more than big enough for our sheltie/corgi mix to pretend to herd whatever she was pretending to herd back there. The whole dog walking thing struck me as quaint — something you did in a climate where you didn’t have to put shoes on your dog’s feet many months of the year to avoid third degree burns from the pavement.

Ray grew up like the rest of America, walking the dog. And our back yard is non-existent. It’s a sore subject. When Rosy was a puppy, 14 years ago, I walked her — some. The task fell to Ray. When we got Jack, I made it clear that he was Ray’s dog; I didn’t think we had time for a puppy. And of course we don’t. But he’s here and there’s no fighting it, and I’ve got to figure out a way to get him to stop eating all of my favorite furniture.

And I need to exercise. I didn’t want to call dog walking exercise, because really, it’s hard to get your heart rate up with 50-plus pounds of puppy desperate to stop and sniff (and don’t get me started on the pooping). The first day, I leashed him up, put on the Shuffle (I recommend a mix of Vampire Weekend and The Fratellis for any kind of walking, which is good, since that’s what’s on my Shuffle and I can’t remember how to change it), grabbed some plastic bags, and dragged him through the Arizona State University campus, my typical walk. Neither of us was very happy.

The next day, I had an epiphany. Why worry about exercise? It’s not like I was getting any last week. Maybe I should try an experiment: simply walk the dog and try to enjoy the world — or at least, the little world in a two block radius from our house.

Along with exercise, this is something I should be working on, for sure. I’m good at appreciating other worlds — pretty much any world other than the one I inhabit. I can wax nostalgic about European cities and just about anything along the Eastern seaboard, of course, but I’ll even get going on the tiny town of Claremont, California, where I went to college, or Tucson, where my parents went, if you’ll let me.

I’ve lived in downtown Tempe for 12 years next month, and while I don’t hate it, I certainly don’t celebrate it. You’re still not going to get me to say much good about ASU (I hope you caught the Daily Show’s piece about the party school refusing to give Obama an honorary degree — this is typical) but I’ve decided to stop  with Jack and smell the roses, along with the oleanders, bougenvilla, pines, xeriscape, overgrown lush, nameless greenscape, cactus and — well, you get the idea.

My neighborhood is much more eclectic than I give it credit for. Every house is dramatically different, most built in the 40s and 50s, ancient for these parts. Home to students, professors and who knows what else, so some stretches are downright slummish; others are McMansion-y. Ours is pretty tame in both regards, although on our block (as I noticed on yesterday’s walk) we have: a fairy garden (really, it’s marked that way — and I think I noticed fresh earth where either a dead body or tomatoes were recently planted); a large display of bright red pick axes created by a landscape architect who mistakenly thinks he’s an artist; a circle of cactus (planted by same); and a chartreuse — I’m not exaggerating — house.

You don’t really notice much of that unless you’re forced to slow way down, to Jack-speed. I certainly hadn’t noticed other items on other blocks — the totem poles in one front yard, a tree hung with metal birds and other objects in another. One yard had very tall bamboo, which I only saw when Jack stopped to have a stare down with a fluffy white cat. The slummy blocks are more fun, I must admit, than the super-perfect, trimmed, polished ones. I like the block that’s a happy medium; there’s an old adobe there I’ve coveted for years.

People are always doing things to these houses. Popping the tops and adding on wings, carports, ginormous, hideous light posts in the middle of a driveway. Yesterday I noticed that signs denoting this a “historic neighborhood” have gone up — likely precluding much more funny business, which is too bad, because one of my major gripes about metropolitan Phoenix has always been the cookie cutter aspect.

At least I won’t ever say that about my own neighborhood again, not after walking the dog.