Post #23 - Buster Climbs a Mountain

Buster Climbs a Mountain

The Mountain

As mentioned in Blog #18, when I first met Buster at the kennel, he was either unable or unwilling to climb the ramp into my car.  Since I wasn’t able to lift His Bigness myself, I knew this was something we needed to work on while I was fostering him. 

At 10 years old and with minimal opportunity to move around much in recent years, Buster has significant muscle wasting in his hips and rear legs.  When he first arrived, he was noticeable wobbly on the back end when wandering around the yard.  This seemed to improve by even the next day, though, as if he mostly needed to “work the kinks out.”  By day two, he was following me up into the garden shed and back down. 

Ramp UP

Ramp DOWN

The shed ramp isn’t either as steep or as long as the car ramp, but still, I was encouraged.  So a few days later, we took another try at that.  Buster approached the car eagerly but put on the brakes when he got to the bottom of the ramp.  “No way!” he seemed to be saying.  So we circled away and made another pass, but had the same result.  It seemed to be the narrowness of the ramp that was bothering him, rather than the steepness (the shed ramp was much wider).  Taking a little break, Buster looked for a way into the car that didn’t include the ramp.  He actually put his front paws up on the bumper!  I’d guess this is how he loaded for years, with a simple jump; but I’m afraid those days are over for Mr. Buster—as they are for most large dogs of that age.  

So we circled around again to the ramp, and he surprised me by taking a few steps up!  With one more pass and lots of encouragement, he got half way before stopping.  Not wanting him to get that close without succeeding, I HAULED him the rest of the way.  And then, with what little breath I had left (105.8 lbs, remember!), I jumped around and cheered in an elaborate show of what a good boy he was and what a great thing he had done.  He seemed less than impressed….so we continued.  He walked down the ramp with no problem, and we repeated the whole scenario again—complete with the stop at halfway, the haul, and the leaping around.  Given that I had just had one of the better total body workouts of my life, we unloaded and called it “good” for the day. ;-)

A couple days later we tried again, and this time he went to the top with barely a hesitation!  I did have to give him a little nudge at the top, but not enough to even make me breathe hard, which was a HUGE improvement over our last practice.  I did the whole jumping around thing again, though, to reinforce how wonderful climbing the ramp is.  So with this hurdle behind us, Buster is eager to get out and meet his public.  He suggests the July 9 adoption event in Cary, so look for us there.  He’ll be the big handsome one. ;-)

SUCCESS! He is on his way to the Adoption Event on Saturday and he is READY to meet YOU!