There isn't much to report, I haven't taken another video because his progress is about the same.
A few days ago I started increasing the length of our walks to about 20mins which he manages just fine. It's been so hot we usually do a walk in the AM and then the PM because midday it is too hot for him on the concrete. Don't want him burning his feeties!
We removed his stitches yesterday. Today he FINALLY got to have a bath. I'm going to give his incision a couple more days to heal, hoping I can get him swimming by this weekend!
Like I said above, his progress is about the same, and actually he seems to be a bit more sore than he was before, especially when we do the range of motion exercise. I talked to the vet who did the surgery and we are also going to try giving him gabapentin 2x a day just to see if that helps with the pain. I want him to be as close to pain free as possible when we try swimming.
I was also able to get a couple pictures today of him receiving acupuncture! He is definitely less painful than he was last week and the vet who does it was able to use the electrotherapy, with the needles around the surgical area - he was really good, didn't make much of a fuss and handled everything really well. He truly can be such a good boy.
He actually started to really relax and fall asleep towards the end of the acupuncture. Every time he has had acupuncture he goes back into his kennel and will rest for a couple of hours. You can definitely see the difference in his demeanor afterward. I do feel that it does buy him some relief.
I wish I had more to talk about, but like I said, his progress is about the same. He's still using the leg to walk around, but isn't putting full weight on it, and he's very sneaky about not using it. He has a lot of muscle loss on that leg, but I'm hoping once he starts swimming that he will be able to be more confident in using the leg and be able to build that muscle mass back up.
Loved reading this. It's awesome that it helps relax and calm him too. So sorry the guy is still in some pain, but hopefully that will go away with time. Glad you could finally wash off all the surgery smell! lol
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