It’s okay until it’s not

Nobody guessed the real answer.

My dog, Bear, was starting to limp on our walks, sometimes slightly and sometimes dramatically. When I took him to the vet, she examined him, and proclaimed that it was probably arthritis. He’s younger than people assume him to be, given his gray muzzle, but his early life was filled with trauma. It was reasonable.

She recommended a supplement and gave me pain pills should he need them, and gave me instructions to come back if it wasn’t better or was worse.

No need for that, I thought. It seemed to work fine. Occasionally he limped but zoomies were back in full force. (Zoomies for Bear include running full speed through the house and launching himself onto sofas, which is slightly terrifying when 70 pounds of muscle become a projectile.)

After a while, though, it seemed not  so fine. Was he starting to limp a bit more? It was hard to tell, until the day came when he didn’t leap into the back of my SUV as he always did. Instead, he crouched low on the ground and seemed to be measuring the distance and effort and what it could take to propel him into his usual spot. He wasn’t sure of himself.

So back to the vet we went, this time to take x-rays.

The surprising (and good) news was that he had no arthritis.

The even more surprising news: He had a small metal object in his leg, next to the bone. Neither one of us saw that one coming.

When it was removed, we discovered that it was a flattened pellet. There was no entrance wound. No bones were broken. Given that his previous owner was convicted of felony animal abuse after Bear was taken from him, it’s not hard to imagine how it got there. How it hit something with enough force to be flattened without breaking a bone, well that’s going to be a mystery.

Who knows where that pellet used to be in his body. Clearly, over time it worked its way down until it was up against the bone, causing him pain and leading to his limping. 

Isn’t that just the way life goes.

We’re going along and everything is as it always was…. Until that thing. That thing that we’ve been carrying without a second thought works its way to a place where it suddenly causes pain.

The way you’ve lived your days don't seem so full of life anymore. Or those habits that weren’t such a big deal suddenly are getting in the way. Or those habits you never adopted are messing things up by their absence.

Or maybe you don't even know what it is. All you know is that you’re limping, more days than not.

You can keep limping.

Or you can listen to what it's prodding you to do now. 

If you don't know what that is, don't worry. We can figure it out together.