During the holidays I noticed Ernie was limping a little. It was a rocking motion, so it was tough to diagnose exactly which leg was bothering him, but I did see that he struggled to sit, and when he did he went down on his left haunch so he could use his right hind leg to lift himself.
The first weekend in January I was walking the dogs out along the shoreline one morning and I heard a little yelp out of him. When I turned to look back at him, he was limping hard, so I turned right around and took him immediately back to the car.
We got him into the vet a couple days later and it turned out he had a torn ligament — the vet didn’t know if it was a full tear or not. She gave him some acupuncture (it helped a front wrist problem he had a couple years ago) and we were told to keep him immobile.
Immobile. A healthy, active 4 1/2 year old German Shepherd mix, with Edie, an almost hyperactive two year old Black Lab mix, as his packmate and partner in canine crime. Oh, this was going to be easy. It took another phone call with the vet to get the terms straight — he could go for short walks on the leash, but no running, and I should continue carrying him up and down stairs.
This, the dog who was so fast I used to toss a tennis ball off the deck to the back of the yard and he would bound down the stairs in maybe two steps, fly to the fence, chomp the ball and bound back up in under ten seconds. We’ve wondered if the mix part was greyhound, Ernie was so fleet.
So I would let them both out in the morning, and he quickly realized that when he was done if he waited at the bottom of the deck stairs I would lean down and scoop him up, all 94 pounds, and lug him up the stairs. What a deal!
Now he waits for me, wagging enthusiastically, then leans away at the last minute to make it just that much more difficult to heft him. It probably hurt his leg to drive himself up the steps. But the wagging made me suspect he was enjoying this, too.
Just what my old back needs at 5:50 in the morning. Who needs coffee to get the blood going? I do hound hauls in the cold and dark up stairways. Don’t firemen train this way? Firepeople. You know what I mean–it’s too early for that.
It has been one of the coldest Januarys I can remember out here (regularly so frosty I stopped using a credit card to scrape my windshield and dug out an old ice scraper) so the bathrobe and slippers soon proved flimsy preparation, and I began adding sweats. And socks. A brimmed gardening hat, on occasion.
“C’mon you guys,” I shiver, hug myself for warmth, and cheer them on in their morning purgations. “Let’s go!”
I mean it just about every way possible.
OmbudsBen 
Oh, man, I remember doing the stair-carry, and as a hundred-pound woman carrying a seventy-pound dog, it was quite a sight! Kiefer does the stairs on his own now, although he’s getting a bit iffy in the hind legs at thirteen. He resigns himself to my husband lifting him into the car. I think it disgusts him that he can’t do it himself, and it’s an insult that someone that he used to help so much now has to help him. Oh, well. We’re all interdependent, after all.
Amen to that, halfnotes. The world would be a much more peaceful place if a lot of people, especially “individualists” who believe themselves self-made, often conservative, took a good hard look and realized how very very interdependent we all are.
I hope Ernie’s leg gets better soon. Even when it is all healed, you might have to give him a hound haul now and then, because that particular kind of excitement a dog becomes used to is so precious to watch. But maybe not at 5:50 in the morning. 🙂
Thanks, W. I’ve got a half-baked follow-up post in mind, in part dealing with how difficult it is to exercise Edie, our slobbery black lab pup, when Ernie has to be kept on leash.
You’re right, carrying the dear boy up the stairs may soon become a part of my regular workout schedule!
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