At 9:40 on Thursday morning, fourteen weeks to the day after Hank's knee surgery, I buckled him into his long-walk harness in a small parking lot near North Branch, and he sneezed three times in a row, which is how he says yes.
The Sunrise Prairie Trail was one of our regular walks before the knee. It's paved, wide and flat, it runs past farm fields and patches of woods, and on a weekday morning in April you might pass four people in an hour. For a dog relearning how to be a dog, it's about as forgiving as ground gets. No roots, no rocks, no sudden hills.
How we got here
Since his eight-week X-rays on March 2, Hank has been on a slow, written plan from his surgeon: leash walks only, starting at five minutes and adding a few minutes every several days as long as he stays sound. We did loops around our own neighborhood in Cambridge for most of March, on sidewalks still edged with gray snow. By early April he was doing about thirty minutes with no sign of favoring the left leg, and his surgeon's office said a longer flat walk was fine if we kept the pace easy and stopped at the first hint of limping.
He still rides in the cargo area of the Outback and walks up and down the carpeted ramp Caleb built him in January. No jumping in or out until he's cleared. He has stopped looking insulted about the ramp, mostly.
The walk
The plan was simple: three-quarters of a mile out, turn around, three-quarters of a mile back. A mile and a half in all, with a stop every ten minutes or so. I set a timer on my phone so I couldn't cheat.
He wore the 2 Hounds Design Freedom harness, the one that won the longer-walks slot in our March harness test, on a plain six-foot leash. The first few hundred yards were all nose. The snowmelt had left the ditches full of new smells, and he worked every one like it owed him money.
The rest stops were the part I'd worried about, because Hank does not believe in stopping. The trick turned out to be making them interesting. I'd step onto the grass edge, let him sniff for a minute, ask for a sit, hand over a piece of kibble and watch how he got up. Even on both back legs, every time. That's what I was really watching for, the whole way.
Around the half-mile mark a rabbit bolted out of the ditch and across the pavement. Hank lunged, the harness did its job, and he came back to my side with his whole back end wagging. I can't overstate how much that tail moved. Cyclists passed, a red-winged blackbird yelled at us from a cattail, a farm dog barked from a distance, and the tail just kept going.
After
We were back at the car in about forty-five minutes. He walked up the ramp on his own, drank half a bowl of water and was asleep before we were out of North Branch.
That evening I watched him closely. No limp, no stiffness getting up from his bed, just a dog who wanted dinner. I ran my hands over him for ticks before bed out of habit. It's a little early, but the season is coming. The next day we went back to a short neighborhood loop on purpose, because the plan says big days get followed by easy ones.
His weight is coming down, too. He's lost about three pounds since his crate-rest high in February, mostly from more walking and a slightly smaller scoop at dinner.
I don't want to make this sound like a finish line. He's six now, give or take, with a plate and screws in one knee and a healthy other knee we've started treating like fine china. Every dog comes back from surgery on its own schedule, and the person who should set that schedule is the surgeon who did the work, not a blog. But for forty-five minutes on Thursday, he got to be a dog on a trail again.
The maple out front has buds swelling on every branch this week, and I'm counting that as a sign. Next Thursday we'll try a mile and three-quarters. Hank would like to try ten.
