Today is Bailey’s 3 week ampuversary! His incision is pretty much completely healed, and on Friday we decided to take him to the beach. We also took him again today as the beach definitely is the best place for his rehab. Prior to Friday he hadn’t been getting much exercise (understandably) and he was having some trouble on his walks. He would get excited and perk up when we said the “W” word, however he couldn’t go much further than 30-40 yards before tiring out and sitting down.
When we asked him if he wanted to go the BEACH on Friday, he jumped right up and hopped to the door! As we hopped up the sand dunes, everything seemed to be right in the world again! This was also Kona’s first ever trip to the beach and boy was he excited! Kona ran and Bailey hopped as fast as he could. Or so I thought…..
A few minutes later, Bailey spotted a male boxer enter the beach about 150 yards away. It is amazing how keen his eyesight is at his age. For those of you who don’t know Bailey, he has a love-hate relationship with Boxers. He loves to hate them. This has always been the case since he was a pup and today was no exception. As soon as he spotted the boxer, the hair on his back stood straight up and my wife said “Uh, babe? You might want to grab Bailey”. I said half sarcastically “Its ok honey, its not like he’s going to be able to run after him or anything.” Well to my surprise, Bailey entered full speed hop mode and started trucking up the beach towards the boxer. I immediately started running after him with Kona just ahead leading the pack. As we approached the 90lb boxer, I feared the worst and kept my hand on Bailey’s harness. I don’t know why I always give him the benefit of the doubt that this time will be different but I always do. Yep – big mistake! It took 2 seconds for them to snarl and go at each other at which time I immediately lifted Bailey up and away from the boxer. The RuffWear harness truly is a miraculous piece of equipment! My wife said it looked quite funny to see bailey flying backward through the air.
The good news was that I was so quick to pull him away that nobody got hurt. It turned out that the boxer just had a cancerous tumor on his leg removed as well, although he was luckier than Bailey and didn’t have to have it amputated. I must admit that we were quite impressed to see how fast Bailey was able to move even if it took a boxer to light a fire under him. It was good to see that he still has that much pep left in him and it also showed us that he is fully capable of getting around just fine. He may be lazy at times, but we are determined to keep up with his rehab and get his remaining hind leg him back into shape as quickly as possible. Exercise, plenty of trips to the beach and a healthy diet will have him back up and hopping around in no time.
Hoppy Ampuversary crazy dawg!
I hope when I’m your age I’m as rockin’ and rollin’. My thing is I love to hate Golden Retrievers. Ohhh, boy, those dogs are such DO-GOODERS! I’m all about making them into real dawgs! And yah, my Ruff Wear harness handle is used a LOT when I run into them. Who knew that things has so many uses eh?
Rock on dude!
The BEACH! I wanna go to the beach ! (just not our beach which would be Lake Ontario- frozen in the winter and lead contaminated dead fish in the summer)
Don’t you just LOVE the Ruffwear harness. We stayed in a hotel in Gettysburg PA and two kids were watching me unload my luggage and then Daisy and they said “Look- they made their dog into a suitcase”
Careful about having Bailey overdo it- Daisy was doing OK until I started pushing her and then she strained a front leg and only had two good ones for about 4 weeks.
Hooray for Bailey’s first trip back to the beach! 🙂 Just keep in mind that long walks and explosive sprinting is not considered “rehab” – we hope Bailey didn’t overdo it. Be sure to work on strengthening his core muscles and proprioception too.
FYI: We removed your RSS Feed widget because it was throwing an error since no valid feed URL was entered. (There is no need to show the feed for Bailey’s posts since your Latest posts widget does that for you.) You can replace the Avatars widget, or upload a Blog Avatar from your Settings tab.
Great photos! Bailey looks so happy, yeah the beach! Rudy loves the beach too, but we’re on the opposite coast.
So happy to hear that Bailey is getting back to normal, chasing boxers and all! Thank goodness for the harness! Isn’t it amazing how quickly they adapt. Bailey’s looking good:)
So glad that everyone had fun at the BEACH!
Going to the beach is awesome!!
I know what you mean by giving the benefit of the doubt- or maybe it is just wishful thinking…
My quad-pug Tani is not a social dog- and likes to snap at big dogs. She is 10.5 years old now and I still think that sometimes she might just find a dog she likes…. alas no.
Keep up the good work!
Karen and the pugapalooza
Chris- It’s the law of attraction with that dog and pitbulls (pitbulls. right?) Good to hear he is still feisty as all hell. Good Boy.