18 Weeks/ 4.5mos Post FHO Surgery and IPO Training!

It's kind of crazy that we are over 4mos since Seppel's surgery. I had our vet[the surgeon] feel his leg this past Monday. While he didn't feel that his leg had grown much muscle wise, and it truly didn't when we measured, he did feel like he was definitely improving and on course as far as healing.

Not as exciting as I had hoped. I have seen the muscle changing in his leg, it's still skinny, but it is more toned than it was when he was barely using it.

In other news, we went to training today. I gave the bite sleeve back and told Ryan I didn't think it had made a huge difference because he doesn't get as amped here at home as he does in training. I was pleasantly surprised that I have my dog back! We started off with just heeling around Ryan and Ryan would walk around us/past us etc. I had to correct Seppel a few times, but nothing major. He was also giving me a lot of eye contact while we were heeling, which was pretty awesome.

Ryan was really happy with his progress, which also makes me really happy. We also worked on the hold & bark just a little bit, and Sepp barked both times! That is some serious progress when you consider all this dog could do before was make garbled growly noises. We primarily did a lot of heeling today, Sepp got some bites because he was being AWESOME, he was actually listening, which was amazing when you consider the last two weeks he's been giving me the big finger.

Saturday I am meeting with someone I have trained with before. He's located here in Hillsboro and if I can afford it, and if we jive training wise, I would like to meet with him in-between going to Salem so we can practice some more. We'll see how it goes, I don't have super high expectations, but if I don't go, I won't know!

And a picture that makes me smile: