Tag Archives: surgery

Quick Kira Update

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Kira had her TPLO surgery just over six weeks ago. I haven’t posted much because there hasn’t been much to say.

She made slow, slow improvements over five weeks or so, then she seemed to have a set back of some sort. Limping more when she walked, not putting much weight on her leg when she stood still.

After a week of that, I called the ortho vet to express my concerns. I mostly wanted to know if she is just healing slowly but she’s on track, or if she is having problems and there is something we should be doing that we aren’t.

So she got her eight weeks xray two weeks early.

The vet said the bone is healing well, though it isn’t done. He said there is nothing that is setting off alarm bells and it may be a matter of time and we can slowly start walking her again to build up the muscle. All good news to me! My dread was being told “if only you would have called us sooner, we could have addressed it when it was easier”.

I walked her to the end of the block and then turned around. She seemed happy to go beyond where we had been taking her to pee. She pulled like a maniac, and I think I will use these short walks to try training her to heel. She has rotten, horrible leash manners. She’s also very trainable and I’m hoping if I stick with training, something that was basically impossible when I had her and Camp, by the time she’s ready to go for a real walk, she may be better behaved on leash. And if I can train her to not pull, maybe I can train her to be less reactive around other dogs. We would love to get a second dog again one day. We are so not a one dog household.

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Poking my head up

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So again, it’s been forever since I did a damn thing here.

Quick update: last year for me, like so many, was not a good year.

Right after Christmas 2019, Camp Randall, our pit mix, had a seizure, his first. In January 2020 he had more and started medication. Then more seizures, higher dosages, more seizures, new meds, more seizures, hospitalizations, more seizures, rinse, repeat.

It was horrifically awful. We said goodbye to him a week ago. The neurologist who was treating him said that sometimes it is helpful to think of difficult-to-treat epilepsy as having a brain tumor. It did help, but it did not make the end not the saddest thing we’ve ever had to do.

So like so much of the rest of the world wrestling with depression and anxiety about COVID and lockdowns and corrupt, worthless politicians and anti-mask assholes, I was also consumed with worry about my poor dog. I had stretches of too much drinking, too much eating, barely sleeping. There were bright spots too and, after a week of mourning, I feel like I’m coming up for air.

So I’m coming back to this blog because Kira, our lab mix, is getting knee surgery tomorrow and I want to use this as a way to record her recovery. From the reading I’ve done, this will not be fun for anyone.

The surgery has been a long time coming. She first started limping spring/summer of 2019. Probably from launching off the deck after a squirrel or goofing off with Camp. We rested her for weeks and months, basically going for walks around the block and that’s it. She didn’t get worse, but she didn’t get much better. She had a orthopedic consult that late summer/early fall. We were told she would probably be a candidate for surgery eventually, but it was not necessary at that point.

So I started taking her for walks again, short at first and getting longer. Then we started running with her. To say she is a fan, would be an understatement. Spouse would take her summer early mornings, trying to beat the heat, and I would take her on the weekends when I went out with a few of my running friends. She did a 5K on Halloween with me, both of us dressed like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and we did a 5 mile Thanksgiving run together. She was my perfect running buddy, even though I never went fast enough for her.

Sometime in early January the dogs were chasing each other in the backyard and she came up limping again, barely setting her leg down. It didn’t get better with rest. We finally had another orthopedic consult last week, and she was put on the schedule for surgery. The recovery period is 6-8 weeks of as little activity as possible, then gradually increasing. She can go pee and poop and that’s about it. This will be torture for my very busy dog. But if it means she can go running with me again at the end, it will have been worth it.