Today marks the 7 week mark following Jedi's TPLO surgery. Routine-wise, nothing changed this past week. Our morning walk has been 3 laps (15-20 minutes), with a mid-morning hill walk and an afternoon creek walk. Probably the most notable thing has been our reduction in meds. Earlier this week I started to only give Jedi his Gabapentin and Trazodone at noon (half of a T, 100mg G). Today I pushed it back to about 3:00 p.m. (that was more of an accident, really). Tomorrow maybe I'll give it at bedtime, and then I think that will be it.
Our followup appointment at the vet was this morning. Jedi weighed in at 40.8 lbs, so he has put on just over two pounds in the last four weeks. Some of it is getting his muscle back, but I do think the lickimats are probably catching up to us now. I have already started to cut his food back a bit more.
They decided to go ahead and try to do Jedi's xrays without sedation. I had no reservations about their ability to get him to behave on the table, but man did I cringe as the tech walked him out of the room (and then again back in) and he was scrambling and sliding all over the tile floor. Dr. Wearing said that everything looks good and that the hardware is still firmly in place and doing its job, but that Jedi's bone healing is not advanced as we would hope to see at this stage. He said it's not concerning, just that it's a bit slow. I have to admit that this kind of kicked me in the gut a bit. Jedi has excelled at everything in life, so I guess I just assumed that we were going to get an A+ report at the vet today.
I told Dr. Wearing my concerns about Jedi's twisty leg, which seems to have been getting more twisty in the last couple of days. I've still been able to control it with pressure against his harness, but this morning it seemed to persist no matter how slow we went. Dr. Wearing wasn't concerned and said it was just lack of muscle to hold the leg straight throughout the stride. He really wants us to focus on building strength and muscle over the coming weeks. We have the go-ahead to start doing actual swimming (lots of it!) as well as adding trotting on leash. Our next followup appointment will be in four weeks and we'll do xrays again.
We wasted no time following the doctor's orders. I brought a bumper along on our afternoon creek walk and we went to the spot where we normally turn around because it starts getting deep. I kept the throws short to keep Jedi from jumping after it or trying to swim too fast (there is a current, after all) and kept him swimming by tossing it out again as soon as he brought it back. I didn't do this for too terribly long, probably less than 5 minutes, because I don't want to overdo things right away. Jedi loved it so much! It's the first time he's gotten to play in the last 7 weeks. I let him trot on leash on our last walk of the day and I think things are looking pretty good. Maybe I've been going the wrong way by slowing him down to fix the wonky twist, as it seemed better when I let him walk really fast to encourage the trot.
Here's video from the swim today and some trotting. (Link for mobile: https://youtu.be/fFVpo9XOY7o )
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