Today marked the halfway point for Ticket. Her surgery was 4 weeks ago, and she’s still doing well. We are moving forward in her rehab. I’ll be increasing the duration of her walks a couple of minutes each day, as well as increasing the difficulty/complexity of her cavaletti exercises. I’m also going to introduce a new exercise, “limbo,” where she has to crouch to get under a bar. Making it to 4 weeks means the major risk of “hardware” failure has passed, but we still have to be careful. It takes about 8 weeks for bone healing to be complete, so 4 more weeks until we take xrays to see where we’re at.
She had her second underwater treadmill session today, going from 8 minutes her first session, to 12 minutes today. She is JUST as thrilled about it today as she was the first time. She gets lots of treats, but she just doesn’t like water. She still walks well and performs, she’s just not happy about it. 🙂
I’ll post some more video of her exercises and gait later this week.
Well, 3 weeks down! Not getting any easier, but c’est la vie.
Ticket had her initial rehab consult with Nancy Doyle at Gulf Coast today. She had ROM measurements taken of her rear joints, and her muscle circumference measured. She also had her first underwater treadmill session, followed by laser therapy.
Per Nancy, Ticket is in the top 1% of dogs at this point post-TPLO. I’m not overly surprised, since she has so much going for her to make recovery easier (fit, skinny, small breed, and young). Still, it’s nice to hear from someone who sees a lot of dogs after the same procedure. Nancy seems to err on the conservative side for the initial few weeks after TPLO, which I appreciate. I don’t want to cause a “hardware” problem by overdoing it too soon, and especially with Ticket, anything we lose (ie muscle mass), I think we’ll be able to get back. So, still not overdoing it.
Not too many changes this week–increasing the number of walks, and continuing cavaletti. We go for another treadmill session and eval next Tuesday, and we’ll see where she’s at at the HALFWAY POINT to freedom. I can’t believe it. As of now, we’re still on track for a return in January 2012.
In the meantime, Trip, Ticket, and I will be heading to Baton Rouge, where I will be giving my first agility seminar this weekend. Very exciting, but slightly overwhelming too. Was planning on Ticket being my demo dog, but obviously she can’t do that now, so Trip will have to handle it all. I’m sure she’ll do great. I think I have lots of good information to share, and we’ll all have a lot of fun. Then I actually get to do some local agility trials in the following weeks. It feels like it’s been forever. I think that’s when it will really hit me that Ticket is out, but I feel good about where we’re at post surgery, and we have a ton of show opportunities come January. We need them–we have TWO Nationals to qualify for. 🙂
I think it will take a lot of cookies for Ticky to forgive me for the water treadmill… 🙂
