I wrote this blog post back in mid-June when I just started walking again and began "training" for the walking program. I considered publishing the story a while back but I thought it was more appropriate to focus on my progress with the Go Training walking plan. Well stuff happened this week that made this more relevant so I'm sharing it now.
Just so you have a little background, I got Olive back in 2008 through a rescue organization. I decided I needed a dog after being mugged in my driveway in the "transitional neighborhood"where I owned a house in Atlanta. The irony is that Olive was the most anxious, timid, nervous lady dog ever when I got her and she certainly was not a guard dog. But I couldn't resist her sweet face and her loving, trusting demeanor. She has calmed down quite a bit, but still is glued to my hip and follows me wherever I go. Regardless, she has been a constant companion over the last four years, during good times and bad.
Story:
I have a dog. Her name is Olive. She is five years old. She is the best. Really. The. Best. Olive and I used to run three miles a day before work, three to four times a week. On days I went to kickboxing or spin class she would still get at least a mile long walk before dinner. She adapted well to going on runs with me and really seemed to love it.
I am currently in training to start working out. I went on my first serious walk in a long time the other day. I walked for 17:32 seconds at a pace that can be defined as "Level 7: I can still talk, but I don't really want to. I'm sweating like a pig." It was exhausting. Anyhow, because it proved more challenging than I expected I thought I'd give myself two weeks of "warm-up" walks to get me ready to do the awesome walking workout Beth and Go Training gave me to establish a base-line level of fitness.
Well today I decided to push myself to do a full 20 minutes of power walking at a pace that can be described as "Level 6: I can still talk, but am slightly breathless." I was really pleased/surprised/relieved to see a big difference in today's walk compared to the one on Wednesday. I felt more comfortable in developing my stride, it felt good to move, and I didn't feel like I was overdoing it.
But about two-thirds of the way through the walk Olive started to fade. At first I thought she just had to pee a lot but then she was panting and really slowed down. After we hit 20 minutes I slowed down dramatically to allow her to catch her breath. In that final stretch, walking home, I watched her. Her movement was slow, she was panting really hard, she looked like she was struggling to keep going. I felt awful. Awful. Here was my closest companion, who had stuck with me through a lot of crap (and some minor neglect when things were really falling apart with the marriage) and I had allowed her to get this out of shape. She was a sausage and moving was hard for her.
Wait a minute, I'm a sausage and moving is hard to me too! After my ex and I separated, both Olive and I needed some basic TLC. She got a good scrubbing at the dog groomer and lots of affection and chew treats and I got help from my parents and friends with pulling me out of kind of a dark place. But it was just now, watching her trudge toward home that I realized, how badly I had treated myself, and in the process, hurt her.
Working on our fitness is a responsibility we have to ourselves (and our pets) in order to allow us to be whole people. It is as fundamental as breathing and eating. When I let my fitness go things started to go down hill. That's not to say everything would have been okay if I just worked out. But I might not have found myself in such a dark place at the end. At the same time, sometimes we get to such a bad place that we aren't able to care for ourselves in all the ways we need to, like getting out and moving. That should be a sign to us that things aren't right.
Olive and I have a long road to get to the healthy place that we want to be at but we will get there. We will cheer each other on along the way and try to be proud of the strides we are making rather than focusing on the things we used to be able to do. And we will get stronger every time we go.
“A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
And healthy, whole people have healthy, whole dogs.
Epilogue:
Since I wrote this blog post, Olive and I have continued to go on walks together. But she would still end up super out of breath and would be panting heavily when we'd get home. I was concerned that I was pushing her too hard so I decided to only take her with me on our walks for the just first 15 minutes and then drop her off and continue on. Since she was still exhausted after those 15 minutes I thought maybe it was the heat getting to her. So on super hot, humid days I stopped taking her with me altogether. But then it cooled down and she still had trouble.
I was a little concerned so I asked a friend who is a avid athlete and veterinary technician what she thought. She suggested I make a vet appointment to have it checked out. She said that at Olive's age it shouldn't be a heart issue but should still be looked at.
Well on Monday I finally called to make her a vet appointment and got her in for Wednesday. Then I made a TERRIBLE mistake that I would imagine my friends with kids know all to well: I looked up her symptoms on Google. After skimming a few pages I was terrified that she had heart disease, cancer, a deadly fungus in her lungs, and on, and on, and on. I called the vet back and got an emergency appointment for Monday afternoon.
I learned two things at that appointment:
1. Olive has put on 12 pounds since we came up to Michigan and is extremely overweight.
2. Olive has laryngeal paralysis (LP)
I've linked to the Wikipedia page for laryngeal paralysis which is a little technical. I found a curtain analogy on another site that explains it really well. Think of it is as if you have two curtains side-by-side in front of your larynx. The curtains open to allow you to take a breath and close so you don't inhale your food. The problem for Olive is that her curtains don't open and close. They just hang there. This can make it harder to breath and since dogs pant to cool down, it can mean that it's easier for her to overheat or get too excited and not catch her breath.
Nobody has a clear picture of what causes LP, but it is exacerbated by obesity (check) and hot, humid weather (check). Typically you see LP in older dogs so I think her weight really drew out the symptoms at a young age. Eventually, Olive is likely to need surgery to permanently tie back one of the curtains which will allow her to breath better. Fortunately, the vet caught it early so I can keep an eye on her and recognize symptoms quickly if it gets worse. In the mean time, Olive's food has been cut back to appropriate levels, she only gets half a cookie in the morning with breakfast, and she only gets one chew in the evening instead of two. What's hardest for me is that Olive cannot go with me on walks until she loses weight AND it cools down.
So the reason I'm telling you all of this is not to educate you on LP. If you have a big dog, you should be mindful of it, but that's not the point of this post. The point of this post is to demonstrate some of the things that happen to your body when you don't take care of it. As I said above, Olive is really a reflection of me. We both have food issues and we eat too much - we also both like to eat garbage although she literally eats garbage and I am drawn to foods that are unhealthy and lacking nutrients...okay so still garbage. Neither of us have exercised in the last few years. The difference is that the toll the weight is taking on Olive's health is showing up much more overtly than it is for me. I would be setting myself up for health problems if I wasn't doing something to improve my fitness too. I just haven't seen the results of my bad choices as soon.
Hopefully, if I can help Olive with portion control, keep her out of the garbage and away from the cat food, she will lose weight and be able to start walking with me again in the fall. But I need to stay away from my trigger foods too (I'm looking at you ice cream) so that I will lose weight and start feeling better in the fall as well. So ultimately, the point of this post is that it's one thing to talk in abstractions about the importance of health and fitness but another thing entirely when you see the outcomes of poor diet and lack of exercise right in front of you.
I love this pup, such a good girl!
ReplyDelete