I’ve been walking in the woods and hills around me for more than 15 years now, it is a medication, exercise, creative and spiritual connect. A couple of weeks ago, I was diagnosed with Stable Angina, a sometimes painful and disruptive heart condition that occurs when the heart is not getting enough oxygenated blood when it is under strain, as in walking up a hill.

My heart is strong, my pulse is healthy, but I was upset by the idea that I could not walk any distance again, especially on hills and inclines. There are not a lot of straight roads around here, and that would be a  significant loss for me, and change in the way I live.

And I have to carry a small vial of nitroglycerin tablets to put under my tongue if the pain gets too severe. I have yet to use one, but I have felt pain when walking on hills and uphill trails. The doctor’s are vague, they say I can walk as far as I want, but where and how is up to me.

I have a tendency to overdue things in these kinds of situations, to walk far and long to prove that I can do it.  I can’t bear the thought that I can’t walk any longer, or that walking would be painful for me.You don’t always need to rush to the emergency room and have things implanted inside of you.

Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. I might down the road, but I believe I can handle my angina comfortably now, and so does my doctor.

This walking thing was causing me some unease and some distress. I walked until I hurt, I didn’t stop frequently enough, so I was always hurting. Not good for the heart.  It’s okay to strain the heart, my doctor says, but not to torture it.

Red is my dog, he is a therapy dog, we work with veterans, dementia patients, residents in assisted care facilities and nursing homes. This week, I decided to see if  Red could be my therapy dog and help me to figure out just what i can do and can’t do.

I decided to work with Red, to use him as a guide and train him to help me stop and wait for me. Red is an astonishingly intuitive dog and I trust him. He knows every move I make before I make it.

Yesterday and today, he helped me to figure out how I can walk anywhere I want, and for as far while still protecting my heart and not being in pain. This was a remarkable experience for me – to be on the other end of therapy work – and I wanted to share it with you. It was very successful, it showed me that I can keep on walking if I just take a few precautions.

As you can see in the brief video, I decided to stop whenever I felt the pressure in my chest building. I didn’t wait for pain. On a mile-long walk up a nearby road, I stopped when I got to the steepest part of the incline, and waited a minute or so. I felt the pressure immediately recede. I had to stop two times before I got to the crest of the hill.

Red completely grasped what we were doing. Every few hundred yards, he would turn to me as if to ask if I wanted to stop, and I checked myself. Sometimes I did need to stop, sometimes I didn’t. I got to the top of the hill easily and comfortably – this had been giving me trouble over the past couple of weeks.

Red, who always runs ahead and sniffs carefully along the road, completely altered his habit, as I was altering mine. He kept a close eye on me, consciously or unconsciously causing me to walk vigorously, but to give my heart a rest when it needed one. At the top of the hill, I turned and walked all the way down without any discomfort at all.

Red kept an eye on me the whole way, I have no doubt he was sensing my heart and my breathing and reacting to it. I never claim to know what is inside a dog’s head, what a dog is thinking. But I appreciate that Red and I slipped into a new rhythm together that helped me discover a way to have angina and continue my walking, something I was despairing of and that is precious to me.

This was an important discovery for me. My heart, in most respects, is functioning very well. I can do almost everything I used to do. I just need to be more self aware. And to listen to Red when he turns to me, as he does in the video, to remind me of what I need to do. Listening to animals, talking to animals, there is so much benefit.

I think I know how to live with it now, sometimes you just have to figure these things out with your own body. And having a wonderful dog can really help.