2nd Surgery This Friday

Well it's been 10 weeks since Jack's first TPLO. From all indications it's been a great success. We started taking him on short walks two weeks back to exercise his new leg, and more to exercise his senses (nothing new to smell in his room or yard, but TONS to smell outside). It will hard to drop him off this Thursday, but we're happy that this will be the beginning of the downhill part of his treatment. From here things only get better. The first two weeks after his next surgery will be tough, but at least we know what to expect. And then, if his left leg goes like his right, in another month he'll be nearly healed (we'll be scheduling his x-ray follow up this time for 6 weeks if they let us) and we can start the physical therapy plan. That's really the next step now, to spend the next several weeks researching and developing a plan to build up Jack's leg strength and flexibility. Next summer will be the summer of the lake (since we weren't able to spend any time there this summer, we'll make up for it next), with plenty of chances for Jack to run and jump as much as he likes. I'll probably post again on Friday after his surgery is over.

8 weeks down - 2 weeks til next surgery

Jack has definitely grown accustomed to his bed-throne in front of his air conditioner. Jack's gone for several weeks now with no limping on his right leg. We recently have been able to see him limping slightly on his left leg (the one that's getting surgical repair in two weeks), so we think that's a good sign (he's bearing load more on his right leg now). His spirits are great (although he does want to go out more now). We've started once daily 5-10 min walks to get him out of the house, and to exercise his new leg a little. We can tell he's not been outside much, he smells EVERYTHING like it was all new. We're in a mixed situation now, really wanting to get the next surgery over now that we see how much better he is, but at the same time, not looking forward to two more weeks of Jack in the e-collar and loathing every minute of the day. Silver lining is that TPLOs, done by professionals, really do deliver results. We are so glad we chose to go down this path. Oh, finally got around to filing his VPI claim, a few weeks before the deadline; we'll see how much of the bill they cover. I've read other posts where they've covered the entire cost, sometimes up to $4k (which is what Jack's right leg ran w/ x-rays). Here's Jack from this past week after happily destroying another new toy. You can see that about half his leg fur has grown in, he now just looks "cleaner" on his right leg.

Air Conditioning - the key to a comfortable recovery

Well I've learned over these past 6 weeks that there has been one thing more than anything else that has contributed to Jack's day to day comfort and calmness during his recovery jail-term - air conditioning. Here in Portland almost no one has central air, window units abound. For Jack's recovery we've been keeping him in the study downstairs which happens to face the west, and barring some decent shade from the Oak trees in the back, does get plenty warm, even now with it being about 85F outside. We knew we didn't want Jack to overheat in the summer (it will get above 100F here for a while in August), so we grabbed one of these portable room AC units from Target. I can definitely recommend this for anyone with a furry dog going through this (or any other) confinement oriented recovery. Jack lies in front of this AC unit from when we leave in the morning until we get home, getting up only occasionally to adjust his position (I know this b/c I have a webcam on him that I can check from work). I think the fact that cool air is blowing on him all the time keeps him sedate and calm, plus the added benefit of white noise (not sure if it works the same for Jack, but it definitely drowns out the outside noises we can hear) keeps Jack in his own little world. The beauty of this is that we've not yet had to use sedatives to keep Jack calm as he goes through the "risky" phase of his recovery where he feels great, but his leg's still at risk.

Here in the middle of week 5, Jack is continuing to improve. He's even shown attempts at "jumping up" (which freaks us out and makes us hunch over to keep him down on the ground), so it's evident he's feeling better (he hasn't done that in almost a year). 3 1/2 more weeks til the second surgery, got the okay from the vet to start taking him on short leash walks in a week given his progress so far. I cannot wait, and neither can Jack.