Those of you that follow us The Instagram or The Facebook, already heard this news, but I just have to share it here.

Since Sampson did a partial cruciate tear back in January (nine LONG months ago,) our walks have been timed. Initially, we started out at five minutes, and gradually, over time we worked ourselves up to eight minutes out and however long it took to get back. A few months ago, Sampson saw our vet, and she felt he was still struggling with strained Iliosoas muscles, and it wasn’t the right time to increase his walks.

So in the last few months, I’ve made some changes in our routine. Mostly, we are playing with meds and supplements to see what works best for him, but I also started giving him some leg massages, and they seemed to help. (I will have a future post on exactly what supplements and treatments we used.)

It was also a hot and humid summer, and Sampson does not like hot and humid, so he was quite content with the small walks, and visits to his favorite people around our neighborhood.

Sampson has always loved the cooler weather. When he was a puppy, he would often times sit outside in the snow. Just sit there.

It turned cooler this past weekend and Sunday was awesome, I’m calling it “A Blue Sky Day.”

My Bubbers climbed into bed with me, and we snuggled for about 2o minutes.

After that we got up to take our walk. The morning was cool, and crisp. I’m not sure if it was the cooler weather, or the fact that our morning walk took place in sunshine (as opposed to the dark,) or hell, maybe just our hard work and diligence has paid off. All I can say is my boy had such a pep in his step, that when my eight minute timer went off, we were only a couple of houses away from the top of the hill.

Three more houses and we would hit the flat part, and then another minute beyond that and we were at our afternoon turn around point.

It was such a NICE day, and he was SO HAPPY, and peppy.

SO, we went for it.

I watched him carefully, slowing him down when I felt he was going too fast….and…we went around the block!!

I can’t tell you how excited I was. AND we made it around the block in about the same amount of time that Delilah does it.

Yesterday afternoon…we had another Blue Sky Day!  It started out the same way, with that pep in his step, he headed down the hill, instead of up. So when we reached our turn around point, I just kept going and took him a bit further than usual.

Of course, I tried to document it with a photo, but someone just wouldn’t cooperate.

Blame it on the Blue Sky Day!