In sickness and in health

Angus was tired after his long Saturday walk.

Saturday was a beautiful early spring day, sunny, blue sky, highs in the 40s. We took the dogs on a lovely long afternoon walk--more than an hour. Maybe 90 minutes. Most of the ice we'd been mincing along on throughout February had melted, and it felt glorious to walk fast and untrammeled and without fear.

Angus was great (Rosie was too, of course)--trotting along happily, splashing through puddles, climbing snowbanks, breaking through the crust, going ballistic only once (it was a big baby stroller that set him off).

Back home, both dogs conked out and slept hard, and then we started to worry. You're really not supposed to take a four-month-old puppy on a walk of that duration. We keep forgetting that he's still so young because, of course, he's so big. (Twenty-seven pounds, assuming our bathroom scale is accurate.) (The puppy calculator still works out to about 82 pounds.)

I remember asking our vet a while back how far it was OK to walk him, and he was pretty vague--the problem with walking puppies too far too early is that it can affect hip development, especially in purebreds, and they can develop hip dysplasia. So we asked Mr. Google, who told us in no uncertain terms that puppies should be walked five minutes per month of life--Angus is four months old, so that means 20 minutes for a fourth-month old, Not 90 minutes.

Oh god, have we ruined Angus's health?

We have been lucky with all of our dogs. They've all been robust and healthy and they've all lived long and full lives. Toby had a heart murmur all his life, but it only became a problem in his last six months. Boscoe developed diabetes at age 14, and I remember asking the vet, "Will this shorten his life?" And the vet stared at me a moment and then said, "He's fourteen. He's already lived longer than most dogs of his size." Boscoe lived another three years, with the help of insulin and frequent glucose curve tests.  Riley never had a thing wrong with him in all of his 16 years and probably would have lived forever if not for his debilitating arthritis.

Getting a puppy is a marriage, almost. A partnership, for sure. You vow to live with this dog in sickness and in health, taking care of it, looking out for it, treating it even if it involves needles and injections. We take this seriously, of course, even when it gets expensive; when Toby went into heart failure he spent several days in an oxygen cage at the University of Minnesota; when Boscoe blew out his knee at age 10 he had meniscus surgery.

After a soggy morning, this afternoon was sunny and breezy again. A storm is moving in tomorrow, and this was our last chance to walk free and untrammeled for another week or so--they're predicting nine inches of snow.

We took the dogs for a walk in the afternoon sunshine. Both dogs walked well. As we neared the 20 minute mark, we turned back toward home.