Friday 24 July 2009

Roman's Limp Is Back!

Today has been a pretty frustrating day for Roman and I to be honest. It started reasonably well as I managed to get up at a decent hour once more (I know, it’s a new me!) and we were out of the house by about 10.30am for our first five mile walk of the day. I noticed about half way round he seemed to be limping a little but nothing too major. I checked his paw out last night and I could see that where his inflammation had been the skin had peeled off it a little. I have been applying cream on a daily basis all week.

We got home and he seemed fine still and then went of for a sleep as he usually does when we get in so I took this opportunity to get something to eat. The good thing about living alone is that when you cook yourself a curry or Bolognese or something of that ilk there is always a second portion left for the following day so I ended up having chicken tikka masala for my lunch!

We were lucky this morning in that the weather was reasonably good. It wasn’t sunny or anything but the temperature wasn’t too bad and it wasn’t raining or windy. At about 1.30pm the heavens opened. Roman was sat outside at the time and there was a torrent of hailstones, at which point he promptly ran in the house and looked at me as if to say “how dare those hailstones hit me!”

I waited for an hour or so to see if we could catch a dry spell in the middle of it all to go on our second five mile walk of the day and decided to chance it at 3pm. I only got about half a mile up the road before deciding to turn back and bring him home. His limp was back and it was quite pronounced too. Once I got him home I rang the vet to see what they thought I should do and I have been advised to rest him for a few days and keep applying the cream.

It’s a real pain that this has happened again but it’s better to get it out of the way now so that I know he is definitely going to be alright for the big adventure! I had another look at his paw as the vet recommended that I cut any excess skin away but it seems Roman had already taken care of that – he’s such a clever boy! I can see that it looks quite sore again now. I put some cream on straight away and he went back to sleep again!

Whilst on the phone to the vets I enquired again about the dog boots and whether they would help him in any way. I was told that it would help keep any sore clean but he would still feel the discomfort so I have decided to rest him until Monday with the exception of a couple of runs on the field near my house. I have been looking at dog boots this afternoon and have decided that the ones we need are the Ruff Wear Bark n Boots Grip Tex – they are pretty expensive at £50 a set but they look really good and it’s worth spending on something like this.

I have called around a few shops that sell these to see if there is any way that they could supply us with a set as way of sponsorship but to no avail. I also filled out an enquiry form on one website so should, hopefully, hear back from them early next week (as long as they are not just rude like so many companies out there and just ignore me!). If I can’t get them as sponsorship then £50 is well worth Roman’s wellbeing.

I am gutted to be honest because we were really starting to get into the routine of chalking a decent mileage up each day and it feels like we are back to square one. On a positive note, at least I know now that it is not any kind of muscle strain and is definitely down to the sore on his paw. He had been coping really well with the 15 miles a day and seemed really up for it each time we went out.

I suppose one good thing about having to limit the exercise is that I can spend a pretty large amount of time this weekend learning Italian. Things have been progressing here and the pace of learning seems to be picking up now. I’m mindful though that there is not long now so I need to make sure I pick up as much as I can between now and me leaving.

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