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Boring old theropod
Here are a few old photos of Zeke. This one is from almost ten years ago, in Nevada on the Tahoe shore. The last one is from a hike in the Richmond hills near a spot I wrote about in this post, and the one in the middle is from 1996, when Zeke was already getting to be an older dog, just before a rainstorm in the prairie north of the Badlands in South Dakota.
That day was fun. Zeke absolutely hated the Badlands: he refused to hike out into them, despite the fact that there were no slopes there he couldn’t have negotiated rather easily. In a box somewhere we have a photo of him standing carefully, feet dug into the ground in full resistance mode, ten yards from the top of a shallow cliff with me pulling hard on the leash.
The good news these days is that Zeke is feeling better. I’ve been giving him 243 milligrams of aspirin every day, which has turned him into a frisky dog who doesn’t act a year older than 12. We’re in high-level talks with his vet about other, less-stomach-eroding antiinflammatories to ease his hip pain even more. These days there are quite a number of efficient painkillers that have few long-term effects — though as I mentioned to the vet, these days Zeke pretty much can’t count on a long term anyway.
It is such a wonderful thing to see our 14-year-old dog run in tight, crazy, joyous play circles again. Tears come to my eyes.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
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