Chapter Twenty-Three: We go on vacation, and the boys get a massage

we first met dr heather when toby was sick, before riley came into our lives. we brought toby and boscoe over to see her in hopes that she could do something for toby, who kept toppling over, and for boscoe, who had, um, gas problems.

toby did not take kindly to strangers (unless they were holding tennis balls), especially in his later years when he was so sick. heart disease made it hard for him to breathe, and that made him cranky. so i was a little worried when we brought him to dr. heather's office. i didn't want him to growl at her, as he occasionally did with strangers when he was feeling particularly ill. i wanted him to make a good impression.

her bright office looked nothing like a veterinary clinic--no exam table, no stainless steel this or that, just a warm room in her big old Minneapolis house, and a futon on the floor for dogs to lie on. toby walked right in, wagged his tail, and lay down on the futon. he grinned up at her. boscoe wanted her attention, too, and we had to hold him, squirming, back.

wow, i thought. she's magic.

she told us, as she worked, that she was moving; she had been renting the big two-story house, but now she had bought a single-level house because her old dog was having trouble climbing stairs. that's the kind of dog-lover i can identify with.

it's hard to remember, now, what she was able to do for toby--he was pretty ill by then, and the reason he toppled over was that his heart couldn't pump very strongly anymore, and the muscles in his back legs were atrophying. but she told us about a miracle powder that helped boscoe digest his food better, and, frankly, cut down considerably on his farting. (she'd have to be truly magic to stop him from farting altogether.)

since then, she has seen boscoe about once a year. she does chiropractic adjustments on his back, sometimes gives him acupuncture, and keeps him in good shape as he grows old. (we also have a regular vet (who looks like kent hrbek) who the boys see for check-ups and vaccinations and the odd injury.)

while we were in paris, Lo the World's Best Dog Sitter brought both boys to see Dr. Heather. riley had been doing a lot of tree-running, and he was starting to hold his back end in a way that made us think it might be tender. i was more worried about his reaction to dr. heather than i had been about toby's six years before; riley is perfectly healthy and has no good excuse for his crankiness, but he doesn't trust strangers at all.

at dr. heather's, boscoe was in bliss. he lay there and let her work her magic. no problems. just a little lower and to the left, sweetie! oh yeah!!

his spine was a bit out of alignment, she wrote us in her report, but not too bad, especially for a dog that has had surgery on one of his legs. (he blew out his ACL two years ago.) he should come back in maybe six to eight months.

but riley! riley was wary.

the results of all his races up the sides of trees and his hard falls back to the ground had done some damage. he did not look happy during his massage.


"pelvis locked with left side higher than right, lumbar spine shifted left, middle back shifted left," she wrote us. "i did lots of stretching and movement of the spine. his hips were sometimes stiff upon extension--better after spine and pelvis adjusted. recommended: chiropractic every four months."


hey! be careful back there!

since his appoint-ment with dr. heather, riley has gone farther up the sides of trees than he ever has before. i'm still trying to figure out if this is a good thing, or a bad thing.

either way, i'm pretty sure that, come august, he'll be getting another massage.