Good News Regarding Roman's Limp!

I took Roman to the vets today and am pleased to say that it was good news. Fears of arthritis or bone cancer were quickly put to bed as it was revealed that he had some inflammation on an infection in his paw. I had checked his paws but had only thought to check the pads. As it turned out the infection is in between his toes on the webbed part of his foot so you could only see it by pulling his toes apart. The vet gave us some antibiotic tablets and some cream and he will need them twice a day. It cost almost £70 which I wasn’t too pleased about but it’ll be worth it if it makes him better!

I think that is one of the problems with having a large breed though. You never really consider how much dogs are going to cost you when you get them and, in my case anyway, certainly don’t think about how much more it will cost for a large breed. The obvious added expense with a large breed is in terms of food and that is to be expected. The thing I never really thought about was that whenever he needs prescribed drugs he needs much larger doses than small dogs. It’s quite obvious when you think about it but it was something that never really dawned on me until I had to get him some!

I met with the photographer from the Chester Chronicle at about 12pm today also. It went fairly well – he got quite a lot of photos of us both. Some of the photos were of us walking in front of the town hall, some on the town hall steps and some walking down Northgate Street. He said that it was always handy to take a lot of photos so that if they do a follow up story they don’t use the same photos over and over again. I mentioned that I would also be taking a lot of photos on the way so I am sure that, if they decided to do a follow up story, then there will be plenty of photos to choose from.

I am not sure when it will appear in the Chester Chronicle but I will be keeping my eyes peeled for the story as it would be nice to keep a copy of all of the publications that we manage to get. It would make a pretty cool collection at the end of it all and would provide something real, if you like, to be able to look back on in years to come and remember what we have done. It will probably make it easier to tell the grandkids about if there is evidence to back it up!

We probably walked about 7 miles in total today but the vet has said to try and limit the amount of exercise Roman gets over the next seven to ten days. I will try and take him for two or three short walks a day across fields rather than one or two long walks on pavements as this way will be less likely to aggravate his infection. It will be a little strange to not be going on massive walks but should provide me with more time to get down to business.

I will make sure I keep my exercise levels up whilst his walking is at a minimum by doing more regular workouts and playing football more with the lads. Talking of football, training tonight was fun but it was absolutely roasting when we played so it was pretty hard work. I am sure that it does a lot of good to be training in that kind of weather but it really takes it out of you after an hour.