Tuesday, September 4, 2012

My (Former?) Running Partners

This won't be my most cheerful of blog entries. I have two bits of news to share that make me disappointed and sad.

The disappointment comes in the form of my now 8th grade daughter. She goes back to school tomorrow (we start LATE around here) and begins her cross-country season next Monday (Sept. 10th.) Why would I be disappointed about that? Because she ran exactly 1 time (that's O-N-E) this summer. I obviously didn't force her to run (she still has a volatile love/hate relationship with running and I don't want her to resent it...or me), but I strongly encouraged her to even run just briefly and slowly to maintain some sort of base. Nope, not interested. The teen years are upon us, and so is the accompanying attitude and lack of motivation. I'm sure she'll still have a good XC season, but she'll be unnecessarily sore (and out of shape) for the first couple of weeks.

The sad news is, to me and my family, hard to cope with. Our 1-year old lab, Apollo, is enduring some sort of pain that affects his back, neck and legs. He's barely able to walk and has very low energy. We rushed him to the animal hospital yesterday. They drew blood (we'll get results back tonight or tomorrow), but the doc said she wasn't quite sure what was wrong with him. It's nothing orthopedic, but it could be muscular and/or neurological in nature. He possibly could have damaged his neck/spine while playing roughly at the kennel while we were on vacation, or he could have some sort of virus that's affecting his mobility or, (worse yet) a disease. Our girls are pretty upset (Natalie in particular). He's on pain meds, which seem to be helping some, but he still moves like an arthritic old dog. Obviously, he won't be my running partner again for a while. We haven't even walked him for over a week, since this all started with a slight limp before it got really bad yesterday, when he could hardly walk.

I'll post the test results and/or updates here as we get them.

I hate to end on a down note, but work is beckoning, so I better get busy.

Happy running!

1 comment:

  1. Oh no Colin! I'm sorry to hear about the dog. I hope it is nothing serious and you will have your running partner back soon. We have a teenage daughter who is highly gifted with gymnastics but refuses to train more that the absolute minimum. Sad to see talent go to waist but as you know you can't dare to make them do more than they are willing to do.

    ReplyDelete