TPLO Day 126 (18 weeks)

I sure do wish that I had better news to report after 18 weeks of recovery following Jedi's TPLO surgery in April. Unfortunately we are just stuck... Or sadly, even going backwards.

We spent the weekend at an agility trial in Murfreesboro (no worries, we weren't entered in that one, so didn't have to pull) and I spoke with a few people who have gone through the recovery process with their dogs. One person mentioned that her dog was not recovering very well, so they put him on Deramaxx for a few weeks and it really helped him to turn a corner.

With that in mind (planning to make him comfortable), I let Jedi do some agility on Tuesday after setting up the course for class that morning. I ran him through the "baby" course from Monday with no bars and low contacts. After the new course was set, I let him do pieces of it with the bars at 20". It was really no more than a couple minutes of work. It is grossly hot this week, so we went down to the creek to swim for a few minutes after. Everything seemed fine.

As usual, Jedi went ripping up out of the creek bottom well ahead of me. He usually runs and throws himself into a roll to dry off. When I got up to the top I saw that he just looked off. He was crouched by the fence like he didn't want to move at all, like everything hurt. He had to poop and seemed to be trying very hard to avoid it. The first thing that went through my head was that he blew the other leg. Who knows, maybe he did. He just moved so awkwardly as we made our way back to the house.

I hit him up with a Deramaxx as planned, although I had not expected the soreness to hit him until later, like it usually does. He did get better as the day went on. I gave him another one for dinner and I have been giving him one at each meal since.

I called the vet's office on Tuesday to see if I could get in for a recheck with Dr. Wearing. We are going in tomorrow morning to discuss our options and come up with a plan. I am okay with the conservative route of "let's drug him for a few weeks and see if that gets him using the leg enough to stabilize it," but I'm also prepared for, "This sounds like we need surgery again." And of course, there's still the dreaded possibility of the other leg needing to be done, because I have no idea what that behavior was about.

So we have that appointment in the morning, and then the chiropractor is here on Saturday. I am really hoping that one way or another we can move forward again. I'm still waiting to hear from Dr. Eide's team about getting on the schedule. Here's today's video (link for mobile: https://youtu.be/viVQf4LHEyo )