Being Healthy

I've agreed to participate in a wellness program at work. As a participant in the program, I have promised to drink 64 ounces of water a day, which is eight cups, and exercise for 30 minutes per day. Just three of us out of nine local people agreed to participate, and I just found out last week that the other two dropped out.
I've been happy to go out and have a reason to walk every day. Last night, as I was feeling the circulation running and getting out of breath going up, up, uphill, I thought about how good it made me feel, and how much good I was doing for my health, and hoping I would want to keep it up when the weather started to turn really cold.
I was winding my way home downhill last night around 8 p.m. or 8:05 p.m. as the sky was turning dark and my 30 minutes were almost up. I was approaching the house that usually has a dog outside of it, and last night it was sniffing in the ditch, as usual, across the street from its house. I've seen the dog there quite a few times. On another walk, we crossed paths and it wagged its tail and went the other way after it passed me. Last night, I stayed out of its way and walked downhill on the opposite side of the street. It had chased one of the members of my household all the way down the hill once, so I wasn't sure if it was all that friendly, so I was just trying to avoid it as much as possible without running and remaining calm and unafraid. I heard it following right behind me, so I turned around, and the second I turned around, it bit me on the part of my body where I sit down. I screamed, out of surprise and pain, and looked around for its owner, at the house where I know it lives. There was no one, and the dog started to growl and bark and act like it was going to bite me again. I looked around again and there was no one. Then I did what I learned from my grandmother, who always had dogs. I pointed my finger at it and yelled at it to go home, go home, go home, and it looked confused for a few seconds, did what I told it to do, and walked back to its house. Another guy was walking up the street and I told him what happened. He said he's walked by the house before and has seen the dog, but the owner of the dog had always been out there and called the dog back to the house when the dog approached him. He suggested I call the sheriff.
Then when I got home, my neighbor was outside and I told her what happened. She suggested I call the sheriff. So I did, and they told me to call the non-emergency 911 number, which is a seven-digit number and is nothing like 9-1-1. They dispatched an EMS technician and the dog warden. The EMS technician came and I had to show him my butt. I couldn't sit down. I had to wait another hour before the dog warden came. The dog warden told me he had to look at it too. It looks bad. It looks like there's a spot on there that resembles what I think leprosy would look like. It's about three inches tall and two inches wide and it has red marks all around. The dog warden explained that the dog didn't break the skin, but the redness was caused by the pinching where the dog's teeth came together on my skin. I guess my skin, or rather my big backside, sticks out too much back there. The dog warden went to the owner's house and cited the owner for "running at large." That's apparently the citation, but I guess it's "causing a dog to run at large," really. The dog warden called me back later to tell me the dog has had its rabies shots. He also said the owner wants me to call so she can apologize. The dog will be quarantined for 10 days for observation to make sure it does not have rabies. He told me he was required to tell me that I could get rabies shots, but there are five shots and each one costs around $3,000 each, so it might be a good idea to wait to see if the dog shows signs of having rabies while it's in quarantine.
I did sit down today. It feels like I'm sitting down on a baseball.