Today is eight weeks since Jedi had his TPLO surgery. As you can see by the above picture, his hair is finally starting to come back in! There is even some "floof" starting to grow in his pants area. That shaved bit on the top of his back is going to take a good bit of time to grow out long enough to where it starts to blend in better. It's still quite a chunk out of his top line.
Routine-wise, we've made a couple of recent adjustments. Because our morning walk includes a lot of trotting, we're now doing a fifth lap. For the record, the fact that I am RUNNING behind my dog is proof that I love him. 😂 This morning I at least put on tennis shoes. Trying to jog behind him in my garden shoes was getting difficult. Sadly for me, Jedi is getting used to me running. It used to be that he'd be trotting along and then realize I was running behind him, so he'd whip around all excited. This gave me a chance to stop and catch my breath. lol He's doing that a lot less now, which means fewer breaks for me. Oh well, it's good for both of us.
The other change to our routine is the addition of fitness work at meal times. I brought some of my FitPaws stuff into the house along with a rubber bucket/pedestal. I also bought a couple of foam balance pads. At the trial this past weekend I had a good discussion with a physiotherapist about how small micro movements of the muscles are what we're looking for right now to improve balance, strength, and proprioception. Not big jarring movements like I was doing with the wobble board.
Right now I'm mixing and matching a lot, trying to find the best combination and to work different muscle groups. We definitely get the best stance when I use a target for both front and back. The most challenging part for Jedi is stillness. We are not good at not moving. I signed up for an online fitness program (for the dog....) and am looking forward to learning a bit more about this. It is not specifically geared towards rehab, but any general knowledge about canine fitness will surely help us. I'm really focusing on Ren as well. Jedi's rehab work has opened my eyes to a lot of weaknesses in Ren's structure and movement. I don't want to go through this again!
Otherwise our routine is more or less the same. We have our morning walk followed by mid-morning hill work. Jedi continues to enjoy our afternoon swims in the creek. I probably should have skipped it today due to how much rain we got, as the creek was pretty high and fast when we went down this afternoon. Because swimming against the current took significantly more effort than usual, I did shorten their swimming time today. We've been doing 5-6 solid minutes of swimming, which is quite a lot with no break. It varies whether or not we go for another walk after my classes at night. We did today because I still needed to get video of Jedi's gait, but now that we're also doing another fitness session with dinner it could get to be a lot. While the leg continues to get stronger and his gait has definitely improved, when he gets tired there is still a bit of laxity and twisting in the leg as he walks.
Here is our video from today. It's a longer one because it covers trotting, swimming, stair work, and some of his fitness stuff. (Link for mobile: https://youtu.be/wkbw2cBGu28 )
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