Here he is hassling poor Coco, who had previously been the undisputed queen of the house.
Well, little Maxy puppy grew up and isn't little anymore. Here's a photo of him from 1998, when he was closer to 100 lbs. He was pretty overweight. We've put him on a diet since then and he's somewhere between 85 and 90 lbs now.
Sometimes we take the sidecar rig. He LOVES to ride in the sidecar. He slouches in the seat and puts his right paw up on the wheelwell and watches the world go by. He sniffs the air at people on the sidewalk. People laugh and wave and point and take pictures. When we park, people always come up and ask questions. If he's especially lucky, we'll go get a hamburger. One time the guy at the Burger King drive-through handed me the little paper bag with the singlehamburger in it and I turned and offered it to Max, who took the bag in his mouth and held it. He'll do this trick about one time in twenty. I pretended to take it in stride, turned back to the drive-though guy, thanked him, started the bike back up and drove off. Found a place to park and took the bag back from Max, who was starting to wonder if he should maybe just eat it, paper and all. It was great - bet the drive-though guy loved it. Too bad I haven't been able to get Max to do that trick reliably.
Max has some saddle-bags that we got for him to carry his camping gear in. Initially, I'd made him a set of bags but the vest I'd made to attach the bags to was too hot and the bags hung a little low. The new, storebought bags attach to a mesh vest that has a little bit of padding at the edges otherwise entirely ventilated. That should took care of the overheating problem. He carries his food, water, tarp, blanket, and some of our gear as well. He's a very strong and sturdy dog but on one uphill trip I overloaded him by having him carry some of our water as well. He let me know that it was too much. Stopped on the trail and just looked at me. He came when I called him, but if I didn't call he'd just stand there. Poor dog! I relieved him of the water and he willingly marched alongside us again.
I also built him a harness for pulling a wagon, which we have subsequently given away. I kept the harness, however, and one winter he used it to pull Kelly and Windy around on Bo's sled (the wooden kind with metal runners). In deeper snow, he sometimes needed help to get the sled moving, but was just fine on packed snow and on ice. Here's the only photo we have of that expedition:
Here's a photo I took of him wearing a sweatshirt he got for Christmas a few years ago. The sweatshirt was too small for him, but the pet store doesn't allow returns or exchanges on pet clothing, so we were stuck with it. The photo was for an ad I put in the classifieds at work.
Here's Max in our back yard, taken April 20, 2002.
In the next photo, you will see that Max has his summer 'do. Every summer we have his dense, thick coat of hair trimmed very short to help him endure the heat. He is much more tan than orange when he is trimmed. Max loves attention. It is not difficult to get him to sit and grin for the camera. Here he is in front of one of the two Butterfly Bushes in the yard. What a goof.
A nose in the house is better than two in the yard. Or something like that.
Happy Birthday, Max! Here he is on his 9th birthday. His medical insurance company sent him a birthday card and a coupon for one free can of dog food. That's what he's holding in the second photo. Old man's starting to go really gray in the face.
He started to suffer from arthritis in 2003, probably due to having been so overweight during his developmental years. It was worst in his hips and back. In a short time it got so bad that he couldn't jump in the back of the truck anymore, so I built him a ramp. Then even the ramp was too much for his sore old hips and I had to lift him into the truck. When even climbing the stairs made him wince, we took him to the vet.
The vet recommended putting him on glucosamine/chondroitin supplements. We went to Costco and bought their store brand of 1500 mg glucosamine/1200 mg chondroitin supplements. Max eats anything and everything except straight spirits (he prefers red wine). He's also been known to occasionally turn down fruit and Altoids. Otherwise, don't offer it to him if you don't want him to eat it. So getting him to take his vitamins is a very simple matter: scrape one tablespoon of peanut butter on the edge of his bowl of dinner in the evening, poke the vitamins in the peanut butter, cover with an additional tablespoon of peanut butter, serve to dog. It's always the first thing to disappear.
The best part is, his arthritis no longer bothers him! After the first year of two pills a day, we cut back to one pill a day. His arthritis began to creep back so now we're on a one-pill/two-pill alternating schedule, which seems to work just fine. The transformation borders on miraculous!