Picnic Table Pain

As you all know, Ollie is a rather enthusiastic boy.  Monday he was having so much fun in and out of the water.  He had his girlfriend Mazy along, and a new friend Zoey.  Maizy and Zoey were "sharing" a small soft Frisbee, as dogs do.  In other words, playing tug with it, or chase - depending upon how many mouths actually had a piece of it at the moment. 

In this picture, Ollie's job is referee.  He feels it is very important to bark and otherwise encourage the other dogs during the tug portion of the event.  Once the chase portion begins, he is all about being hot on their heels.  Unfortunately for Ollie, event though he must be approaching his second birthday by now, his wiggly puppy butt still has control of those hind legs at moments.  So while the other dogs ran around the picnic table, Ollie's back half figured it would go through the picnic table, at full speed.  CLUNK!

Dogs are interesting when they hurt themselves.  They go to "all stop" in a big hurry.  I would have sworn Ollie had broken or dislocated his hind leg, he hit the picnic table so hard.  He stood there on three legs, and just looked around as if to ask if anyone got the license number of the truck that had just hit him.  Then he let out a little whimper, which was what really concerned me.  Dogs are actually much like small children, they look around to see from your reaction how they should react. So I calmly walked over to him, and started feeling his legs to see if he reacted to my touch anywhere.  I found nothing out of place...so gave him lots of love and appreciation for what a good boy he was, and of course we commiserated over how that wicked picnic table had jumped out in front of him. 

And this is when the real test comes, when the clunk is out of his short term memory and he wants to go play with his buddies again.  If the hurt is real, he'd feel it on his first few steps and become a three legged dog for the time being.  If not, he'd go on as if nothing had happened.  Which fortunately for both of us is what happened.  It is a LONG way from the water to the car, it would not be pleasant to have a truly injured 80 lb dog to carry all that way.  And he really was back to his normal self, played like a crazy dog the rest of the day.  Warned his owner about the collision, so she could keep an eye on him.  Like with us, the second and third day can be much worse than right after the incident for dogs too.  Good news, he ran with no limp the following day.  I'll let you know if he goes anywhere near the offending picnic table today!