My wife and I have a dog, a 90 lb Labrador named Miles. He is a good boy. Sometimes he gets sore, and I want to understand why, and how I can help.
Miles is now 7 years old. He has never especially craved exercise, usually content to lie around and sleep most of the time. At times in the past we have been able to be more active with him than we are right now. We still make sure he gets a few walks every day and we try to run with him or take him to the dog park as often as we can.
In the last year and a half, we've found that on the mornings after some exercises, he is very sore. On these occasions we will find him lying on the floor, upright on his stomach, usually shivering (not sure whether this is fear or cold or both, he usually sleeps on the bed with us). When prompted to move he will reluctantly try to stand up, and yelp and cry as he's doing so. We coax him into walking back and forth in the room, sometimes with treats, and once he's been up and moving about for a minute he appears to be completely fine from then on. Obviously his suffering is alarming and sad to us, and we're also concerned about it's long-term effects.
We understand that taking him on a long challenging hike will make him sore. What is baffling is sometimes going to the off-leash park does it to him, just the other day we had only 10 minutes there, and he was sore the next morning.
Taking him for a run will NOT make him sore, I have been running 3 miles with him and though he is slow, he is completely fine afterward. I can also take him for a quick sprint around a block or two, which he enjoys, no problem.
I have started giving him glucosamine tablets every day, and I give him some aspirin on nights I think he's going to wake up sore in the morning. I don't know if either of these things is helping.
Can you offer any insight about what is going on, and what I can do to help him? Thank you metafilter! |
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