Walk, Lucy, Walk
Lucy has been having a bit of a rough time this summer. First a bladder infection, now it appears she has ringworm and requires medicated baths twice a week AND a medication that will likely make her barf that I can’t even track down yet. But most of all, she has been dragging. Lucy has been running with us for the last two or three years. In fact, if it wasn’t for Lucy I probably wouldn’t even be running at all. Bored with walking her and getting my arm pulled out of the socket at the same time, I wondered what it would be like to run with her and that was that. Since then, she has been our faithful companion on many runs. We were always very careful-never taking her out when it was too hot, and never going more than 4-5 miles.
Lately, however, we cut that back significantly. In April, we started noticing that after her initial crazy burst of energy for the first quarter mile or so, she would ease off quite a bit, and by the last half mile she’d be trailing 2 or 3 feet behind. Since that started, we have only been taking her out for 3 miles maximum and cut down the number of times a week we run with her. Still, she drags. Maybe it’s just the summer heat? Maybe she’s not a spring chicken anymore (she turned 4 this spring)? So, this week we decided to bench her for a little while. No running for Lucy until the middle of September and in the meantime I’m going to try and give her some glucosamine just in case it is her joints bothering her. She had an x-ray at the vet recently and nothing showed up, so hopefully that’s not the case.
For now we’re back to walking which, quite frankly, she’s perfectly happy with and since we’re scheduling it around our running days, Brian and I will get a little bit of mild cross training that we usually don’t get. Hopefully, her spirits will pick up soon and maybe we can go back to running someday. All I know is, I love that dog like crazy, so whatever makes her feel better, that’s what we’ll do.
Hiding from the vet at one of many recent visits.
Feel better, pups!
3 comments August 14th, 2008