Week 19 got skipped because I'd done a post earlier in the week, but also because I was on the road to Ohio for the weekend. I learned that it's really hard to stick with a solid rehab program while traveling.... Our hotel room also had laminate flooring throughout the room, so I was loathe to do anything there. I actually ended up stopping at Walmart and picked up a couple of yoga mats to at least help with the on/off the bed situation.
I brought Jedi inside once a day at the trial to work on rehab stuff. I'd packed along his balance disc, figuring we could use that for pivot work and weight shift exercises. We also were able to fit in one decent walk per day, but definitely far less than what we do on a usual day.
Unfortunately Jedi's routine has continued to be disrupted because I brought a puppy home with us from Ohio! Not surprisingly, puppies take up a lot of time and we've modified our daily routine a bit. We're still doing the 8-lap morning walk, but we haven't done hills all week (the fact that it's 90+ degrees isn't helping that). We've also only gone swimming once.
I wish I could say that I've noticed an improvement in the pivot shift, but I haven't. It's still there. If there's anything good it's that the Deramaxx seems to have at least made Jedi more comfortable.
We're at a trial in Murfreesboro this weekend, but our days are short since Jedi was supposed to be running and I only entered the regular classes. Then we're back in Ohio next weekend.
Today Jedi and I drove just under two hours for our first rehab visit with Cassie at VCA RIVER in Chattanooga. I can't say there were any big epiphanies or anything, but it is nice to have someone to work with through this. I wish we had this service a bit closer to home because I would certainly sign on for weekly visits, but I did commit to going every other week for a package of five visits. We will go back on Monday the 30th, which will also allow us to talk to Dr. Wearing while he is there to discuss our next steps with medication.
Jedi found a tennis ball shortly after we arrived, so it instantly became his favorite place on earth. He was less thrilled when he had to lay down to have his knee lasered, probably just because the ball wasn't involved. He also got to do 10 minutes in the underwater treadmill. He wasn't sure of it at first, but it didn't take long before he was happily walking along with the tennis ball in his mouth. It was interesting to see that except for a time or two, he really didn't have the twist in his leg while walking in the water.
Cassie is hopeful that we can have him back for the October trial in Franklin, which would give us one trial before Cynosport. Fingers crossed. We were sent home with a bunch of exercises, which I will post here. Truly, a lot of this is going to return us to the very early, most basic rehab stuff that is recommended after TPLO. It is entirely possible that I did not spend enough time on the "simple stuff" like weight shifting the first time around. Tonight we did weight shifting with the hind end on the disc, with both front and hind end on unstable surfaces (brought in the bone for the rear), and the leg lifts. I was surprised at how much Jedi still resists the diagonal two-legged stand. That's pretty telling, I guess. Oh, we also tried the "dancing," which he absolutely hated, so I'm guessing that was hard for him as well.
Here are screenshots of everything we were sent home to work on the next two weeks. She didn't prescribe anything done in any sort of order, claiming they all more or less are going to work on the same thing. We are supposed to spend 15-20 minutes a couple times a day.
As planned, we met with Dr. Wearing this morning to discuss a plan forward for Jedi. The first thing we did was go outside so that he could see Jedi's gait in person. I was prepared with video because he usually doesn't wobble if he's pulling on leash at all, and, well, he pulls on leash a lot. Our appointment was at 8:20, though, and we had done our usual morning walk, so he wasn't super crazy and his leg did wobble for us.
Dr. Wearing said that he is familiar with this and has treated it in the past. The poor man had to listen to me rant and rave about everything I've been doing and how it's not working at all. He manipulated Jedi's leg a bit and confirmed that there is inflammation.
We were sent home with a larger dose of Deramaxx -- I'll be giving half of a 75mg tablet for the next few weeks, which is pretty much the max dose for his size. I also have an appointment with the rehab specialist that Dr. Wearing works with in Chattanooga on Monday morning. I am looking forward to having someone put their hands on him and define which muscles we need to build up and hopefully come up with a plan. It is likely that we'll meet up with Dr. Wearing again down in Chattanooga at the end of the month since I will be traveling on the days when he's at our clinic.
Dr. Wearing said he is "cautiously optimistic" that we can resolve this without resorting to surgery, but that's always an option. He did not seem to have any concerns that the meniscus is involved, though. We'll see how the PT appointment goes.
I sure do wish that I had better news to report after 18 weeks of recovery following Jedi's TPLO surgery in April. Unfortunately we are just stuck... Or sadly, even going backwards.
We spent the weekend at an agility trial in Murfreesboro (no worries, we weren't entered in that one, so didn't have to pull) and I spoke with a few people who have gone through the recovery process with their dogs. One person mentioned that her dog was not recovering very well, so they put him on Deramaxx for a few weeks and it really helped him to turn a corner.
With that in mind (planning to make him comfortable), I let Jedi do some agility on Tuesday after setting up the course for class that morning. I ran him through the "baby" course from Monday with no bars and low contacts. After the new course was set, I let him do pieces of it with the bars at 20". It was really no more than a couple minutes of work. It is grossly hot this week, so we went down to the creek to swim for a few minutes after. Everything seemed fine.
As usual, Jedi went ripping up out of the creek bottom well ahead of me. He usually runs and throws himself into a roll to dry off. When I got up to the top I saw that he just looked off. He was crouched by the fence like he didn't want to move at all, like everything hurt. He had to poop and seemed to be trying very hard to avoid it. The first thing that went through my head was that he blew the other leg. Who knows, maybe he did. He just moved so awkwardly as we made our way back to the house.
I hit him up with a Deramaxx as planned, although I had not expected the soreness to hit him until later, like it usually does. He did get better as the day went on. I gave him another one for dinner and I have been giving him one at each meal since.
I called the vet's office on Tuesday to see if I could get in for a recheck with Dr. Wearing. We are going in tomorrow morning to discuss our options and come up with a plan. I am okay with the conservative route of "let's drug him for a few weeks and see if that gets him using the leg enough to stabilize it," but I'm also prepared for, "This sounds like we need surgery again." And of course, there's still the dreaded possibility of the other leg needing to be done, because I have no idea what that behavior was about.
So we have that appointment in the morning, and then the chiropractor is here on Saturday. I am really hoping that one way or another we can move forward again. I'm still waiting to hear from Dr. Eide's team about getting on the schedule. Here's today's video (link for mobile: https://youtu.be/viVQf4LHEyo )
I forgot to get a picture for today's post, so this is what you get. Jedi has assumed his usual position of sleeping under the table until we go to bed. This is actually pretty good, usually he's wedged through the rungs of one of the chairs.
I had our pre-consultation with a member of Dr. Eide's team on Monday as scheduled. No surprise, our "20 minute call" quickly doubled in time, but I was just so thankful that someone was finally listening to me and acknowledging our struggles. I shared our history and it sounds like we're going to move forward with scheduling a 90-minute consult with Dr. Eide to come up with a plan. Unfortunately she's currently serving jury duty, so we have to wait until that wraps up to actually schedule something. Until I hear back from them, I'm just going to continue with what we're doing.
I actually feel like maybe there has been some progress this week. Don't get me wrong, the leg still wobbles, but maybe just a little bit less? I've modified our routine slightly in that I keep Jedi on leash for the first five laps, and then when I bring the old dogs out for the last three laps I am letting Jedi off leash. The three leashes just wasn't working well.... I am keeping him to a walk and trot off leash, although I'm thrilled to report that I've actually seen him lope on the right lead a time or two this week. He gets to be off leash again for the after-class walk in the evenings and is being a good boy. I keep him on leash for the hill work to control his speed for that, although he seems to hate hill work and drags a bit going up hill. Me, too, buddy....
I've backed off on agility stuff for the most part. I've let him play a little while I'm setting stuff up, and that's about it. Monday was my first night of a new session of contacts class, so everything was set very low. I let Jedi go over everything, including his running a-frame. Everything looked fine, but he definitely seemed sore later on. A couple of days later we did some jump wraps for his toy and he seemed to actually hold up well to that with no gimping later on.
I pulled Jedi from the AKC trial in Ohio that I'd stuck him in on August 20/21 (19 weeks post-op). I haven't pulled entries for the trials the next two weekends yet and figure we'll go day by day on those and pull on the closing date if need be.
Sixteen weeks have come and gone since Jedi's TPLO surgery now. We're currently in a holding pattern until our consultation with Dr. Eide. We have our pre-consultation on Monday afternoon to determine the best solution for going forward. Until then, we continue plugging forward with what we're doing. In the morning we do our leashed walk. Jedi and Ren get five laps on their own, which takes about 25 minutes, and then I keep Jedi on leash for the three laps that the old dogs get. That's super fun since the Klee Kai are also on leash, but it does get him up to about 40 minutes of walking in the mornings now.
We have returned to hill work,which is also super fun given that we are at the height of our summertime temperatures right now. We've been going up and down the hill at the side of my parent's house about 4-5 times in the morning, and a couple more times during our evening walk.
We also continue to do our "fitness sessions" for both breakfast and dinner. That's what I will mostly be looking for guidance on from Dr. Eide. There is no rhyme or reason to the exercises we do, but at this point I hope that something is better than nothing.
Jedi is otherwise allowed off leash, but I have backed off any additional work the last few days. Earlier this week I was doing circle work, where I ask him to run clockwise through some hoops or wings to force him to actually run on the right lead. Later that day he was really favoring his leg, even holding it up in the air after rising. I haven't even swam him the last two days to give him a break, which Jedi thinks is a terrible travesty. He has seemed more comfortable again today, so maybe tomorrow we can give him his swimming back. The running will probably wait until we have more guidance. I feel like I may as well go ahead and pull him from the upcoming AKC trials, but I am awaiting official word from our consultation. We are not going to be able to qualify for AKC Nationals, so I may as well just remove the pressure and not push to return too early. I am still hopeful for Cynosport in October.
Here is today's video, which I made a bit lengthy in the event that I have to have something to share with Dr. Eide. It is in chronological order, and you can see that it gets worse as the walk goes on. He actually starts out pretty decent these days. (Link for mobile: https://youtu.be/Ge3v-ndTgcA )
I had so hoped that we'd be well on our way to the finish line by this point, but unfortunately that's just not the case. This week, after so many weeks of obsessing over "the wobble" in Jedi's leg when he walks, I finally learned that it has a name. It's called a pivot shift, and it's seemingly a very uncommon phenomenon that happens in a small percentage of TPLO patients. Some reports make it seem like a very small number of dogs, like <5% experience it. A vet in a Facebook group where I posted said it's probably more like 30%, but your average pet owner probably doesn't notice it.
So here we are, 15 weeks post op, still dealing with something that I have been expressing concerns over for the last 10+ weeks. Everyone has always said, "give it time." This week I swear it has been worse than ever, which is what prompted me to really start digging online. I saw someone in the TPLO group mention the term pivot shift, so I started to dig through the group to see if there were any other conversations about it. I'm really a bit surprised by how very little there is to find. I made a post on a canine conditioning page, though, and that's where I got a lot of good responses. One of the professionals on the page has a dog who had TPLO done in both legs and ended up with pivot shift in both (from what I did find, it seems as though it's more common in border collies).
The news doesn't seem all that encouraging from the people who have been through it. It is possible to correct the condition through very specific and focused exercises that build up the correct muscles to support the leg. This conditioning then has to be maintained. For some dogs, the only way to correct the condition is by going in and doing a lateral suture, which is basically a whole 'nother CCL surgery.
Given that his leg seems to be getting worse, not better, Jedi has returned to being on leash for our walks. He still has freedom in the yard, in the house, and when we're out back setting up for classes, but he's on leash for walks to ensure that he gets focused time each day where he's using his leg correctly. I'm quite sure that his off leash time on walks have not been helping to build up muscle as hoped, or at least not the correct muscle. For example, he lopes around on his left lead 100% of the time, so clearly he is compensating.
I reached out online to Dr. Leslie Eide, a rehab professional who does virtual consultations. Unfortunately the earliest time slot I could get to meet with her was Monday, August 2. I'm not even sure if I meet with her at that appointment, or someone from her staff, as it sounds like more of a information-collecting meeting to determine the best way to help me. My hope is to get a very specific exercise plan to build up the correct muscles. Until then I will keep plugging along with the stuff I've found online for canine fitness work. I am now working Jedi for both breakfast and dinner.
I have no idea what this means for his return to agility timeline. I'm hoping that Dr. Eide can help to answer that question. I'm also hoping that she has experience with this issue and will be able to tell me at what point we need to contact our surgeon to discuss those options.
Here's our video from today. It just really bothers me to see his leg moving like this. (Link for mobile: https://youtu.be/hlCSUVeWId0 )
We're now 14 weeks following Jedi's TPLO surgery. That's almost 100 days! In the above photo Jedi is posing with his daily castoffs. I've been combing through his coat pretty much daily while we are on the floor doing his PT and I seem to get about this much hair out of him every day. It's crazy. Our daily swims have given him a pretty crazy hairdo and I figured that the daily grooming will hopefully help to blend in the new growth. Overall I think he's looking pretty good!
I have more or less given Jedi freedom to do whatever on our morning walks these days. He overdid it on Sunday, unfortunately. Because we take Sundays off from our morning PT exercises, I decided to let Jedi & Ren stay out to walk extra laps with the old dogs. We have been doing five laps lately (about 20 minutes), and on Sunday we did four and then I got the other dogs, who get an extra three laps. Jedi was running around like a loon the whole time and just as we were finishing up the last lap I noted that he was standing by the gate holding up his surgery leg, and then he continued to favor it the rest of the way back into the house (without a leash on him, good luck getting him to just walk....). I gave him some Deramaxx that morning and we took it easy that day. He's been doing well since, but it is not uncommon for him to be stiff for a bit following activity. I definitely can't skip his nightly massage or I notice a difference the next day.
Jedi continues to be allowed to do more agility in short spurts. I had hoops and a barrel out for class on Monday, for instance, so I let him run through those some. On Tuesday I let him run through some 8" jumps on the course I had set. The turning was a bit much for him, I think, because he did seem sore after that. I have started to do some short 1-jump drills of offering the jump back and forth at 20". That's where I really see weakness and lack of power from his hind end. Finally, I let him play on the short training teeter some, because I still think the full sized teeter has a little more bounce back than I want to see for him right now.
We still have the "problem" of the right leg toeing in, but it's not 100% of the time so I still hope that it continues to improve. It hasn't seemed to bother Jedi at all, I just worry about long-term soundness from it. But other than that I'm really quite happy with the way he's carrying himself and he seems to more or less be weighting his legs equally when standing.
Here's our video from today. It includes our morning walk, Jedi's water workout (I stand in more shallow water now so that he has to push through it a bit before swimming), and a demo of where he's at with "agility"work. (Link for mobile: https://youtu.be/flPt1UtENEs )
Today we are 13 weeks out from Jedi's TPLO surgery! Jedi is very much enjoying his continued freedoms and activity since being "released" by his surgeon last week. We traveled up to Indianapolis over the weekend, which included a hotel stay and our very first time back in a bed since Jedi's surgery. The dogs thought it was awesome, whereas I pretty much slept as well as I always do in hotels. We've been back in the bedroom since arriving home, though, and it's been very nice.
Note in the above photo that Jedi got his tug leash back. This makes him exceptionally happy. I switched him out to a leather leash at the beginning of his recovery to discourage him from his jumping/leaping/tugging habit, and he's been very good about not going after the leather. As soon as his fleece leash came back out he was a tugging fool. He really missed it.
We were able to take several nice walks on the streets around the trial facility during the day, but that was the extent of Jedi's rehab over the weekend. Thankfully we got home in time on Sunday that he could go swimming! He did get in lots and lots of tugging while ringside at the trial, too. The poor guy was ever so hopeful that he was going to get to go in the ring every time we came back inside the building.
This week has largely been about learning to let go. For the most part I'm letting Jedi go outside by himself now, although that's more self-serving than anything. He did one of his leap & spin maneuvers off the porch this morning, so I'm going to have to put him back into his harness for that first trip outside again. I didn't like that move even before he broke himself. Otherwise he's been pretty much free and only under verbal control (he is a good boy).
Here's the hair growth situation as of this morning. I comb through his coat most evenings during his massage & stretching sessions. Right now he's carrying about the least amount of coat that I've ever seen on him, but it helps to blend in the shaved bits.
I have been slowly reintroducing agility to Jedi, mostly with the goal of safely adding in speed again. I had a straight tunnel set for class on Monday night, so I recalled him through that a couple of times. This week I have recalled him over some 8" jumps a few times, and today we did 12". Everything is just in a straight line right now. I let Jedi do a teeter this afternoon and cringed a bit at the force with which it hit the ground. This evening we played around on the tiny training teeter that I have out for the beginners and I felt a lot better about that one. He's so happy to be playing again! We are entered in a trial in Ohio that is six weeks out, so we'll see if we're ready come then.
Here's our video from today. It's our morning walk, some of his morning workout for breakfast, and swimming. (Link for mobile: https://youtu.be/sz1Y85hg79I )
We are home from our vet visit with a glowing report! Dr. Wearing said that Jedi's bone is 100% healed and that he is released from all restrictions. I probably asked at least five times if he really meant ALL restrictions and each time he said yes, but that if we overdo it then it is likely that Jedi will be lame for a bit. I know that I'm going to struggle letting go all at once, so there will still be certain restrictions in place. When we got home today, though, Jedi got to be off leash while I prepped for class, and then I let the boys out the back gate to go potty. Jedi took off running to the weeds, and then (likely because I wouldn't let him this morning because I didn't want him to be wet for his appointment....) he went and jumped straight into the creek.
We discussed the toed-in gait and Dr. Wearing explained to me the mechanics of the CCL and why we're seeing that. Apparently there is another type of plate that claims to help stabilize the rotation of the leg, but it has a much higher incidence of causing infection and needing to be removed. Dr. Wearing feels like what we're experiencing now is normal, and the improvement that we've seen lately is proof that we're going in the right direction. He told me that someone I know had found a rehab specialist that he felt was a miracle worker, so I'm going to reach out to her and get some info on that.
But big news, I guess we all get to sleep in a bed tonight for the first time in 12 weeks. 😁
