Jan
15
TPLO 10 Weeks
Hard at work
10 weeks since TPLO surgery. I think Ticket is finally on the upswing. I can see her bearing more weight on the surgery leg, and while she still has some residual lameness at times and alterations in her gait, she is moving much better. Her lameness does increase with exercise, but resolves, which indicates muscle fatigue. Which, counter-intuitively, is what we want. In order for Ticket to build up more muscle and recover, she needs to hit those points where she is sore after exercise–otherwise, you’re not pushing hard enough to build muscle. Of course, you can go too far–you don’t want severe lameness, and you don’t want it to persist.
Ticket’s knee feels good, and there’s no evidence that there’s a problem with the surgery itself. She will have more xrays next week, 4 weeks after the last set, which will hopefully show a healed bone. At that point, she’ll get some more freedom, and hopefully get to do a little more outside, with more speed. I’ve been very down about how she’s doing the last couple of weeks, but I now think we may have hit the low, and are on our way back. 🙂
With everything going on with Ticket, I haven’t been in an agility frame of mind. I took my lack of motivation as a good chance to give Trip a break from agility. No training, no practice, no shows, no nothing, for almost 6 weeks–I think it may be the longest break of her career. We had one practice, and went back in the ring for the first time on Sunday. Only one day of agility, but I got a wonderful reminder about how much fun I have running Trip, and what a perfect girl she is. She felt great, ran great, and got QQ #90. First qualifying score for 2014 Nationals. As she always seems to remind me…best dog ever. I hope everyone at least once in their agility career gets to experience running with that degree of teamwork and understanding. I hope Ticket and I get to that point one day, but I don’t think it’s a given with every dog. Definitely something to strive for.
