We've made it to day 6! For the most part it's been a very quiet day. It started out a little sad, though. We got up a bit after 6:00, went out, had breakfast, did PT, and all was well. I put Kaiser in the crate next to Jedi and took Ren & Secret out for their morning walk. I left Jedi with a frozen lickimat drizzled with honey again. When I checked on video all was well, but Jedi didn't spend much time with the mat. He seemed pretty subdued when I returned from walking Ren & Secret. I planned to swap out dogs and take Kaiser & Kizzy out for a short walk since they have literally done nothing since Jedi came home, but when Jedi refused a treat (and had almost the entire lickimat left) I opted to stay in the house to watch him.
It wasn't too long before he was due for his 8:00 a.m. dose of Gabapentin. I have never had any issues with him taking treats, canned food, or anything else I offer him, so this was pretty surprising. Clearly we can't miss any doses of Gabapentin, though, so I popped his mouth open, put the meatball in, and held his muzzle shut until he swallowed it. He sat oddly in the pen for probably the next thirty minutes, staring into space and not looking at me. Then he laid down and took a nap, and by the time 9:00 a.m. rolled around and it was time for his pheno he was happy to take food again. I'm starting to think he was just really depressed when he got left inside yet again for the walk. I don't know any other way to handle that situation, though.
Here's the suture line today. For some reason I feel like it looks really bad in the picture, like it's splitting open or something. I really didn't think it looked that bad in person. The area where the skin looks like it's coming apart is totally dry, so it is not giving me any concern. I am using the laser directly over the suture line now, so we'll see if that promotes rapid healing.
Getting Jedi to flex his leg out from the hip continues to be a challenge and a half. I swear he is clutching that knee into his flank harder every time we sit down to do our PT stuff. He is still randomly stretching it to full extension on his own accord, so I am hesitant to believe that he's protecting it because it hurts. In working with his other leg, and while doing Ren's stretches last night, I did realize that my hand position for getting the hip flexion is usually right over his suture line. I'm probably going to be goosey about putting my hand there for a bit yet. In order to be able to actually get the laser to the suture line I rolled Jedi over and put him between my legs like we do for his nail trims. While in that position I was able to get him to extend his leg out a fair bit, and he stopped clutching it in tightly. I guess we'll do it that way for a while.
I put everyone but Jedi outside while I cleaned the yard this afternoon and left Jedi with a Kong that had some canned dog food and peanut butter in it. He seemed to do fine with me going out this time and was very into the Kong. As I was circling around the back yard I pulled up my web cam and saw that Jedi had his front leg trapped through the opening of his blow up collar! Thank goodness I checked, because I was planning on staying outside and working Ren a bit. I ran in the house to save him and he seemed fine. I rolled the video back and thankfully he wasn't in that position too long, and he didn't do anything bad that would have hurt the leg. I apologized to him and gave him a bit more peanut butter on the lickimat when I left him again, and this time he was fine with that. Maybe he doesn't like the frozen stuff....
This afternoon I was reviewing some of the rehab documents I've been collecting online, mostly wondering when I was supposed to start adding in more walking. I've been limiting our trips outside to potty only, and then right back inside. A couple of different sources that I have state that you really only need to strictly limit for the first few days, and by the end of the first week you should be able to do 5 minutes comfortably. We just wandered around the yard a little bit more today. Starting tomorrow I think I'll take him out of the yard. The agility ring might be a little too exciting to start with, maybe some trips back and forth along the driveway.... I also started adding the moist heat to a couple of our sessions. Jedi seems to prefer icing, but did better with the heat when I put a washcloth between the bag and his skin. I didn't think it seemed that warm, but he also has no hair to buffer it. There are bits and pieces growing back in, though!
Here's our video from today. He's still favoring the leg when he's in his pen and when he first comes out, but seems to be walking on it well once he starts to use it. (Link for mobile: https://youtu.be/5TFn9jH682Q )
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