Therapy takes a good 30 minutes each time we do it, which is still averaging every four hours. I am making the most of it and multi-tasking when I can. In the above picture I'm using the light pad on his hip because he's been super tight there while doing his stretching exercises, I'm using the cold laser on the knee, and I'm icing the underside of the knee and his hock (where the swelling is).
Our routine is to come out of the crate, lay down (right side up), and then ice top & bottom of the knee while I use the laser on the swollen hock for 10 minutes. Then I remove the ice and switch to massage, which morphs into the PROM exercises. Then I finish with the above, using the laser for another 10 minutes on the knee.
This morning I gave Jedi a lickimat while I took the other dogs for their walk. I put a couple of mats in the freezer last night (combo of peanut butter, yogurt, and pumpkin) with the thought process being that if they were frozen they would last longer. Uh, nope. Jedi went at it with his teeth and was able to get it off in large chunks, so that didn't work as planned. It didn't keep him occupied for very long at all. I was watching him on my Wyze cam while I was out with Ren and while we were still on our first lap I was pretty uncomfortable about Jedi's behavior. He was upset, in the corner of the pen facing the door, and barking. He's not one to ever jump out of a pen, but I just didn't want to risk anything. I came back into the house and moved him into the crate. He was quiet and settled for the rest of our walk. I also left the view to the outside open, which I had blocked earlier thinking that would help. Guess not.
I taught an agility lesson at 11:00 a.m. Typically I lock all of the dogs in the bedroom, but I elected to instead put Kaiser into the crate next to Jedi to keep him company. I don't think it would be a good idea to put them in the xpen together, but this idea seemed to work well. They both stayed nice and quiet during my lesson. Since it was going so well, I left everyone where they were and took Ren outside to work him. Jedi is not generally a fan of being left out of the fun so I have been hesitant to do anything with Ren since bringing Jedi home, but we didn't have any problems and Jedi stayed quiet the whole time. Thank goodness Kaiser doesn't mind hanging out in crates, we'll use this a lot going forward.
I think that the swelling has gone down some today, but most notably the heat is leaving his leg. It's been quite warm to the touch since coming home, even following an icing session. Today it's feeling quite normal and cold after icing, so that's good. The hock is still a bit squishy, but it doesn't seem as bad as yesterday. I think the laser focused in that area is probably helping.
Jedi is gaining a lot more confidence in his leg and is also starting to come out of his post-surgery fog a bit more (despite still being on Gabapentin and Trazodone). He's becoming a bit more of a handful on the way outside and wanting to move around more when we're out there. This is only going to get progressively more difficult, I'm sure. I'm using a leather leash on him to discourage the biting/tugging behavior that he does on his fleece leash and I can tell that this upset him today when he wanted to tug. lol Sorry buddy, not for a while yet. That will be part of our physical therapy down the road.
The incision still looks good. I think it looks a little "angrier" in this photo today, but then I just realized that it's the difference between the main camera on my phone (what this is from) vs the front-facing camera (the selfi-mode that I've used for the other shots of the inside of the knee). I have started to wipe down the frozen packs of peas after use, though, figuring it's not a good thing for them to get dirty and be up against his wound.
Finally, here's our day 3 video. This is from our trip outside around 2:30 p.m. (Link for mobile users: https://youtu.be/d0rLfaDQppU )
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