To Minnesota! Outdoor Fun + Vet

All pictures by Megan.

We make occasional trips up to Minnesota to see our favorite rehab vet. We first went for Griffin’s injury… but now Viktor goes for his legs and Blaze goes to help maintain/improve his mobility.  Our last trip was in October and while we should have gone in December, I was too worried about driving in winter weather. This time we were prepared to cancel – but the timing was perfect, we had beautiful days, some bad fog on the way back, and got home well before 12″ of snow fell up there!

This time we took a friend and her dogs and thanks to some magic and finding the right crates we were able to transport 6 dogs safely!  It’s a much nicer drive with a second person – someone to supervise the car while the other is in a store/bathroom/getting food and an extra set of hands – for calling 911 about a semi truck completely on fire…

Blaze on left, Bailey on rig

We visited our friend Megan and got to run our dogs at her farm. We didn’t end up with much time to go far – but the dogs thought it was great and were very, very happy to frolic in the snow. This weekend was only the second time Tonks has been in any amount of snow because of our mild winter.  She kept loosing her ball in the snow and we did end up having to leave one there.

Sunday night we had a “senior dog sleepover” and (almost) 15 year old Blaze and 16 year old Bailey slept crated in the same room (due to space in the other rooms).  Blaze did not want photography in the morning – he wanted breakfast!

Blaze has gained some weight since our last trip (yay) but not enough. We’ll be doing some different exercises to help strengthen his back end again and keep him moving as well as possible. I’m very happy with how well he’s doing considering his age and breed.  While we waited at the rehab vet, many of the dogs we saw come through were older dogs. I really wish we had a resource like this locally!

October picture- you can see his back end tucked under.

Viktor: His leg rotation hasn’t changed measurably since October. We’ll be changing his exercises too to better help him move, increase specific muscles that might help his feet, and we’ll try taking him off pain meds! Hopefully we’ll be able to do some water treadmill locally to help us get by until we can go swimming again soon.  One of the things we are watching for his how he moves his back end in play – he gets a “zoomy” look and tucks in his tail/back end as he runs – some dogs do this as part of their joyful frolic, but it’s most of how he moves. Maybe he’s just inefficient or it could be adjusting for his front end and any discomfort int he past.

Griffin didn’t have an appointment this time and Tonks doesn’t need to go back until she’s grown up (2 years).

It’s really hard to get away – I have to cancel classes/get subs/ plan ahead and I wish I could go and stay up there a bit longer! We’ll be going back in about two months, maybe being able to do another trial/event while we’re up there. I’m always excited to see what progress we’ve made!