Lame. Left. Lab.

A couple of weeks ago my poor poor dog made a quick stop-turn while faithfully retrieving a ball and somehow injured himself. After a couple of days of the lameness not improving, I took him to the vet where they poked, prodded, x-rayed, and to my profound horror, I discovered that dogs sometimes expel poop-like goo from their anal glands when scared of being forced to lie still in the face of giant x-ray machines.

After I wiped my dog's disgusting ass (seriously, Mennonite vet tech, is it somehow against your religion to clean up the mess you scared out of my dog? Because for as much as I paid for that x-ray, you should have cleaned, perfumed, and waxed that sucker Brazilian-style.), I was relieved to find that there were no breaks that they could see. What I needed to do was restrict his movement as much as possible, keep all walks on-leash, and keep those to a minimum. Ha! This vet doesn't understand my dog's major compulsion: he doesn't poop unless you take him somewhere other than our house. You have to walk him or he won't poop. He'll just drop bombs that are enough to fumigate our entire house for a year. Apparently he took the saying "don't shit where you eat" very seriously and very literally.

All in all, it's been a stinky couple of weeks around the house, punctuated by regular pacing. Usually, Cole and I will do at least 3 miles a day (and he is off leash running like he just discovered the wonderfulness of life, so he does more like 7), so we have seen a drastic increase in his restlessness. He's finally starting to get better, so if the weather would just start to cooperate, we could go hiking!