I'm feeling relief on several fronts today. After seeming to really favor his leg on Thursday into Friday, after a full day of rest and returning to icing, we're back on track again. Even better, our little escapade into the creek yesterday did not set us back at all, which made me feel better about doing more today. All of our PT equipment like the cavaletti and cones were put away for mowing this weekend so I haven't revisited that yet. I have added time back into our walks, but I wouldn't say we are doing any sort of distance because I'm letting Jedi stop, sniff, and eat grass pretty much as much as he wants. While I'm not a fan of that behavior, he has been putting all of his weight onto the leg while doing it so I'm going with it.
When he's wet you can see that hair is starting to grow back in! 😀
As I stated above, since Jedi seemed to do well with our (very short) trip into the creek yesterday, today I went out looking for more opportunities to get him into water -- preferably something more appropriate. A friend has posted pictures of where she takes her dogs swimming in this area and I got a couple of leads from her on places to check out. They were about twenty minutes away, so I loaded Jedi into the van and we set off to check things out.
Unfortunately, while they looked like great location for "normal" times, both would have required more physical effort than Jedi is ready for right now. One was down a pretty long and super steep hill, followed by a fair trek to get to the water (at least today, while the water levels were low). The other one had a decently long walk from the parking area, a much smaller hill, but still a long trek to get to the water. The walk to & from the van would have already been pushing the limits on where we're at with our walking at this point, much less the exertion of the water workout. Maybe one day we can check them out again when everyone is healthy and sound.
Since that ended up being a bust, we came home and I decided to take the weed whacker down to my parent's side of the creek to see if I couldn't find and open up a better place for us to get down there. There ended up being a really nice spot that would almost work without the ramp, but I still brought the ramp down to make things safer. In this location I was actually able to get Jedi up and down by myself, but I did still use the sling on his hind end for more control.
The water on this end of the creek was much better, and the rock was more even and easier to walk on as well. This is going to be a great place to continue Jedi's water therapy going forward! We can return to the other end of the creek when he's ready for swimming.
When we came back into the house I decided to go ahead and ice his leg again, but I quickly learned that icing a wet dog is kind of mean. It didn't take long before Jedi was shivering, so I felt pretty bad about that. I went and grabbed the space heater to help warm him up again, so that's the story about the picture above.
Here's video from our creek fun today. (Link for mobile: https://youtu.be/wZsstfxlf5U )
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