In about three weeks, my dog Wally and I are going to Valencia, Spain to visit his friends Mark and Jill. If you find something about that sentence a little odd (a dog? has friends? who live in Spain?), I will not argue. In fact, it may well be that I have finally lost whatever is left of my mind, as this venture has proved to be costly and complicated and, among other obstacles, has required that Wally go on a crash diet to be permitted to ride in the cabin rather than in the cargo hold. Whatever a cargo hold is, it doesn’t sound like somewhere I would want to leave my dog in a crate by himself for nine hours. But I’m seriously getting ahead of myself. Well before the drama of Wally’s weight loss and travel plans, there was bigger and more expensive drama, but even that is not really the beginning of this story. Let us go briefly all the way back to the P.W.E., the pre-Wally era.
Which was the Beau Era. My darling dachshund Beau, aged 16, shrugged off this mortal coil on September 18, 2020. I thought I would wait several months before getting another dog, but within days my children had me looking at dachshund pictures on Facebook, and one of the devoted dog people I met there told me with great authority that I absolutely should not wait, I should not suffer a dogless life one more day than necessary, and that it was perfectly fine to get a dog similar to my lost love, and in fact, she had a litter of dachshund puppies including two black-and-tan males in the barn right then, though they were all spoken for. Not to worry, she knew of another litter of puppies who were still available, though they were in Ohio, and she would hook me up. All this happened so quickly and easily that before I knew it I had arranged to drive to Ohio to pick up a puppy who had been born eight days before Beau’s death, on September 10.
Wally’s natal home was an organic dachshund farm in Garrettsville, Ohio, near Lake Erie. When my daughter and I made the 14-hour trip to get him in November of 2020, it was our first road trip of any kind since lockdown. The farm was a lovely place, with acres of fields and forests and dachshund puppies romping in a low enclosure. There was one slight glitch in that I drove the car into a drainage ditch on the way into the property but a nice man with a big pickup yanked it right out.
Wally was named Wally, per my daughter’s suggestion, partly in tribute to our late friend Evan Wallace, on that drive home. Unlike his namesake, who was seven feet tall, Wally was so small that he could perch on my shoulder, and he did, the whole way to Baltimore.
I am not a very strict dog mom, to say the least, and though I did manage to housetrain Wally pretty quickly, he received no other concerted or effective instruction and to this day only comes when called if he feels like it. He was not trained not to beg for people food. Quite the opposite. For the first two years of his life, his main sustenance was a dish called Puploaf his breeder had suggested I give him, providing a recipe. Turns out Puploaf is really just Peopleloaf, ground turkey baked with fresh veggies, eggs, and brown rice mixed in. But that was just what I put in his dog bowl. I also shared my own meals and snacks with him, and he quickly proved himself to be a gourmand. You say dogs don’t like garlic, or can’t eat spicy food? Wally loves both of those things. The only thing I hesitate to give him is cheese, because it’s the one food he does not easily digest. So he only gets occasional tiny bites of it. Brie is his favorite, I think.
Due to this bad behavior of mine, Wally was always on the chubby side. And while strangers often commented on his extraordinarily beautiful face, just as often they would say something about his size. This constant fat-shaming really annoyed me. Even the vet said he was obese! He didn’t seem so obese to me. A few extra pounds didn’t seem to interfere with his life or his activity. And sharing food gave both of us so much pleasure. It seemed like it would be practically impossible to put him on a diet, especially since I had no will to do it. He seemed to be perfectly happy weighing 20 pounds.
Well, I was wrong. As I would eventually find out.
On November 5, 2025, two months after Wally’s fifth birthday, I noticed that he was having trouble coming up the front steps. A back leg seemed to be dragging a little. I carried him in the house and saw that something was definitely wrong. I thought I’d keep an eye on him for a day, but not only did it not improve, the next morning he couldn’t move at all. I called the vet, who’s just a block away, and waited anxiously until they could fit me in, then rushed down with him in the carrier pouch I have been using to take him everywhere all his life.
After a brief exam, the very kind female vet broke the news that Wally almost definitely needed back surgery, and it would cost about $15,000, and if I could get my mind around that, I should take him to the neurology clinic immediately. Regretting that I had let two days pass already, I was out the door almost before she finished her sentence. I hadn’t realized how much pain Wally was in but I could see it now. He was so stoic, I never even knew when the incident or accident that had caused his injury occurred.
Wally’s MRI that afternoon showed a ruptured disc, and he was taken straight into surgery. This operation, I was told, worked in most but not all cases. Some dogs never walk again, which is why you sometimes see dachshunds with wheeled gadgets attached to their hindquarters. Some need permanent assistance with bowel and bladder function. Terrifying prospects.
When I still had not heard from the doctor by 10 p.m. that evening, I was beside myself. Maybe Wally had died on the table. Oh, my poor pup!
Finally, the phone rang. The surgery had been complicated but Dr. Gainsburg could see “no reason why Wally would not make a full recovery.” Hmmm. I thought about that wording a lot.
I was told before I went to pick him up that while he had recovered nicely from anesthesia and his bowels and bladder were in working order, he had not yet wagged his tail, a key indicator of a functional spinal cord. But, the doctor pointed out, he hasn’t had much reason to wag. Perhaps when he sees you…
Wag he did, the second he laid eyes on me. I burst into tears. At least my $15,000 was not spent in vain. It was about ten days, I think, before he could walk without my holding up his hindquarters with a sling. He weaved around like a drunken sailor, his back legs often folding over and sliding out from under him. I knew I was very lucky, since I was now in close touch with a friend who had been through it all with her own dachshund. He didn’t wag for two weeks or walk for months!
For most of November and December, I rarely left the house, doling out his medications and keeping him by my side all day and night. Then, to my horror, Wally somehow re-injured himself in January. Thankfully, we were able to treat him with a course of prednisone, avoiding a second surgery.
Among the friends who were monitoring Wally’s progress from afar were Mark and Jill Batterson, a couple who became Wally’s second parents by taking care of him whenever I was out of town. Both he and I had missed them very much since they moved from Baltimore to Valencia, Spain the previous October. They had been planning to retire to Europe for a couple of years, and had settled on Valencia as possibly the very nicest place in the world. On February 28, I sent them this text:
This is still very pie in the sky but my neighbor Karin told me she’d be interested in traveling together this summer — what would you think if she came with me and Wally to Valencia, stayed a few days with or somewhere near you, go to beach and explore Valencia then leave Wally with you and do a little traveling by train (Barcelona, Madrid, or ???)
Though she will miss them terribly, my tiny but fierce Korean-American neighbor Karin will not be bringing Tony and Pippin to Spain. Tony, also a dachshund, barks at literally every single person he sees, and Pippin, a big black something or other, is afraid of strollers, skateboards, scooters, pickup trucks and just about everything else. And anyway, people don’t take their dogs to Europe. Sane people, that is.
Things came together quickly once Mark and Jill enthusiastically welcomed us to come: reservations, tickets, and a lot of bracing news about Wally’s travel. His round-trip flights would cost $428, and the “international travel consultant” at my vet explained that he would need to be microchipped and receive a new rabies shot, $190, then it would be another $500 for a travel exam the week before the trip to receive an expedited FDA Health Certificate. I was appalled and went on to annoy the hell out of the consultant with my many questions and doubts.
It was then that I learned of another serious problem. To ride in the cabin on Air Portugal, the pet and his carrier together can weigh no more than 8 kg. Wally weighed more than that without the carrier!
And this, my friends, is what finally made me change my ways. It turned out Wally and I were perfectly capable of weight loss. What I did with GLP-1s, he did with 1/4 cup kibble in the morning and 1/4 cup of wet food for dinner, with mixed vegetables and chicken broth added to make it a little more substantial. I cut out all dog treats so that I could still share tiny bites of people food with him.
Since the beginning of March, he has lost over 5 pounds to reach his ideal weight of 15, and he is safely under the 8 kg limit in the carrier. And I can see how happy and lively he feels in his new body. When I asked the doctor if Wally’s being overweight had caused his injury, he spared my feelings by telling me that he does this surgery on dachshunds of all sizes. But yes, he would have a much better chance of full recovery and no further injuries if he were lighter. And now he is.
Meanwhile, the trip is coming up in three weeks.
Wally can’t wait to try tapas!
