Our white dog named Sugar isn’t with us any more. She has had bad hips for years, and finally was unable to stand on her own. She liked going on walks to the end, but was having far more bad days than good days. We euthanized her the morning of Tuesday May 25.
We believe that Sugar’s hip problems were caused at least partially by being a wheel dog in an earlier life, before we got her, with a traditional X-back harness. Such harnesses tend to put downward pressure on a dog’s rear, and this is worsened in the wheel position where the sled is lower than the gangline, and there are more jerks and bumps. We got Sugar as one of our first kennel rescue dogs. She was part of the sled team for a few years, but then made the transition to inside. One interesting thing is that while outside, she had persistent urinary problems — to wit, she’s peed in her dog box, resulting in many winter experiences chopping the frozen piss out of her box (embedded in straw, stuck to the wooden box). Nasty. But when she moved in, this immediately stopped. She did lose most bowel control over the past year or so, but not urinary.