Rocky's Rehab Update

Rocky's surgery was now almost 4 months ago and it's been a long road to recovery for him. I'm a little behind on writing about how he's been doing. When we last left off we had a follow up with the surgeon at this point it was probably about 6 weeks post surgery and it was clear at that point he was not recovering the way that he should have. Of course our poor dog would heal outside the normal range. At this time he recommended that we consider doing physical therapy with him. Mike and I both agreed that if that is what it will take to get him recovered then we'll do whatever it takes for him, and at whatever cost.

Unfortunately doggy rehab does come at a premium. We had to buy a package of 9 sessions for him so we did that, taking him to rehab 2 days a week. While he is at rehab they make him do things like walk over poles, make him stand on two legs and dance with them as well as walk on the under-water-doggy-treadmill, yes thats right a water resistance treadmill for dogs. We did seem him start to make progress, but like anyone in rehab it was very slow progress. At the point when he finished his first rehab package we had another talk with the doctor (the rehab doctor) and she recommended that we do another round of physical therapy as he still needs to make more progress, so in the end we decided to go ahead with another round of therapy, hoping this would be it.

We won't be able to keep doing rehab packages at the animal hospital indefinitely especially if there is little progress to be seen. Concerned about his lack of progress I called the doctor again earlier this week to check with her. I am glad that I called, because as a result of our conversation they are 1) going to begin doing these new laser treatments on him (something they originally wanted to charge me an additional $30 per session for) which they will now "throw in" and 2) they are going to have the surgeon take another look at him to make sure everything from the surgery is healing properly and there is nothing else we should be aware of. All of the doctors keep telling us that this is very abnormal and most dogs make a full recovery from FHO surgery, so we're trying to stay optimistic.

We're also increasing the amount of work we do with him at home. The problem is he is very stubborn. His good leg is now massive in size, the muscle is huge, while his other leg is still very weak, it's clear he favors the good leg so we need to get him to use his weaker leg as much as possible. When we take him for walks we now put a "bottle cap" (not a real beer bottle cap or anything) on his good paw, which is supposed to irritate him and make him pick that leg up so he uses his bad leg more, unfortunately it obviously doesn't irritate him enough because he still finds a way to use that leg anyway.

We're still hoping he'll make a full recovery, we don't want to see this result in problems for him later in life, so we're doing whatever it takes to get our little guy all better!