Yesterday, the girls and I took a 1/2 mile leashed walk. Chris did not limp at all during or after the walk.

A couple of days ago, it was raining all day, so I put Kate and Tam on the tread-mill, to take the edge off of their built up energy. Christian has never been on the tread-mill, so I showed it to her while the adult girls were trotting on it. After the adult dogs were done with their time on the tread-mill, I introduced Chris to it.

What a disaster. She was scared, so I took it really slow with her. NOPE, she was not going to walk on it. I could get her on the mill while it was turned off with no problem. However, as soon as I would turn it on, she would freak and almost shut-down. So, I introduced food, getting another sense involved.

Food worked a bit, as she would get on the tread-mill with it turned off, again. But when turning it on, she still freaked, even with food literally under her nose. She wasn't too stressed not to take the food, but she would not walk.

I was straddling her and trying to help her to get through this initial part of walking on the tread-mill. I lifted under her, holding her feet to the belt, while it was on as low as it would go. I could get her front feet to work on the belt, then hold her while her back feet would kind of walk on the mill. But I could not get both sets of her feet to work "normally" while on the tread-mill.

She also started reacting to the beep noise when the machine itself powered up. So I started working on desensitizing her to just the noise alone.

Later that day, I took Chris back to the tread-mill for another lesson. I grabbed a new bag of Zukes mini treats, to keep helping her learn on the tread-mill. She was walking, but not normal on it finally, while feeding her the treats. Not a real pretty site doing it by yourself, as I really needed another hand to help feed her.

Christian will probably take several more lessons on the tread-mill before she is comfortable walking on it. I don't want to have her struggle too much, and undo what her crate rest seems to have done. It seems that she has lots of Zukes in her future.