dogs and fitness

We believe it's important to keep up Penny's level of fitness, especially as she had her knee operated on last year. She had the traditional repair of her cruciate ligament, and for about seven months she swam regularly, often twice a week.

Now that we have more confidence that she is recovering well, we've returned to some of our previous activities. The long-awaited return to Cindy's Allsports class has been the highlight of our week. So it was disappointing the see that she had a slight limp after last weekend's class.

It was a hard decision to stop going to the Allsports class, but we will rest from it for a while to make sure she's okay.

So, back to the swimming...

I decided to take her to Kepala Canine Resort, because it's a bit closer than the other pool we've attended for about a year. Also, Penny can play in the water rather than just do therapeutic laps.

One of the things I love about Kepala's indoor pool is the mural. It makes me feel relaxed just to lean back on the fence and look at it.

I also like the fact that the pool is raised above the level of the floor, so I can walk around with Penny and encourage her to swim by racing her for her floating toys. She gets up a real speed when I'm hurrying around the edge to grab the toy. The entry is easy for her, too. There's a raised platform for entry:

She's supposed to enter by the ramp to the right of this photo - although there's a gentle slope, dogs need to be confident enough to push off into deep water when they reach the bottom of the slope. Definitely not a problem for water-loving Penny.

She thinks that's a pretty good place to come out of the water, actually. (But about half the time she did come out at the other end, the correct place for emerging. It depended on which ramp was closer when she reached the toy.)

It's entertaining to throw more than one toy in the pool and watch her organising the retrieval. Eventually she came up with the idea of swimming for one, depositing it on the side, and going back for the next.

She always collected her favorite first, of course - the beloved Whirlwheel.

It was great to discover that her AussieDog Slapathong floats, too!

one year after cruciate surgery

One year ago we were celebrating the fact that Penny had recovered enough from cruciate surgery to walk down a small ramp to the street and sniff around.

How long the recovery seemed to take!

But here we are, twelve months later, having fun once again. For all those people out there whose dogs need surgery, I say, 'There will be light at the end of the tunnel. The time will pass.'

Here's a short clip of Penny running a small agility course yesterday. (And that was after an hour's walk in the country!)



I wouldn't want to see her doing too much of the agility, though. We were told after the surgery she will always have to be careful. Yesterday was the first time she has jumped as high as she does through the tyre. We'll watch her carefully this week to see that she is not limping. And we still do exercises most days to strengthen the muscle in the repaired leg.

a muddy river and a limping dog

Yesterday Penny and her humans went for a walk to Yarra Bend Park, the dog-friendly place where she can walk off-lead. To our surprise, the Yarra was at the lowest we have ever seen it. (Later we discovered the weir at Dight's Falls has been taken apart for repair, which has left the river at what our informant said is its natural level.)



The low level of the water had revealed an interesting object.



But Penny was more interested in the water than what was on the bank, so she went for a swim.



As we strolled back along the path, Penny hastened to a boat ramp that leads down to the water. We don't usually swim there, even though it's an off-lead park, because there's a strange sign that seems to indicate that in this spot dogs should be on lead. (Very strange) Penny jumped off the ramp edge, which is usually under water, and couldn't get back up, because she was stuck in the soft mud.

With our physio's advice 'no scrambling from now on' in our minds, we raced down to try to lift her onto the edge of the ramp, to no avail. Eventually we managed to direct her around the side of the ramp where she could scramble up onto dry land.

We didn't worry too much until later in the day, when she hobbled across the kitchen on three legs, her left leg held off the floor. Oh no! The lovely extracapsular surgery - had it been ruined?

The vet nurse was reassuring when we rang for advice, saying that even though it's common to have a setback, the surgery is strong - but we made an appointment for today.

And then gave Penny some tender loving care - an ice pack on the joint, ten minutes at a time, and hand-feeding of nice little carrot tidbits.



During the rest of the evening, we gave her lots of massages to the leg, as the physio had done during the recovery from surgery.

This morning the vet said she has probably strained the leg, but she seems okay. She's not limping, but we didn't exercise at all today.

Here's hoping!

a dog swims to start the new year

It was a wonderful way for Penny to start the new year - she swam at her old favorite spot in the Yarra river. We were a bit nervous about her first free swim since her cruciate surgery, but she seemed to take it in her stride - hmm...mixed metaphor there!






We are following the advice of our canine physiotherapist regarding Penny's recovery, and only introduce one new activity at a time, so that if she suffers a setback we will know what caused it.

However, this evening she seems fine after her swim.

For the last month we've been swimming twice weekly at Dogs in Motion, and Penny has built up to swimming for thirty minutes, so I felt fairly confident she would cope with a short swim in the river, but it was still a bit scary seeing her go out there. Thank goodness we didn't have to jump in and rescue her.

dogs and life's simple pleasures

Penny went down the back steps today and into the backyard to rest in the sunshine.

How wonderful such simple pleasures are! Six months ago I wouldn't have thought anything of it, but after four months of her recovery from cruciate ligament surgery, going everywhere with her on lead, it's so great so allow her to come and go as she pleases.

Penny's Christmas party

At last! Penny is able to go out with other dogs. And, just after Penny reached week 14 after cruciate surgery, it was the day of Cindy's doggie Christmas get-together at Kepala.

My dilemma was that Cindy, quite correctly, told me that Penny needed to be off lead when she was with the other dogs. (And how true it was - Penny curled her lip and snarled at her old friends when I tried to take her into the pool area on lead.) Once she was off-lead she was fine.




So, how to keep Penny from exhausting herself racing in and out of the wonderful pool?



Well, a simple solution. I threw her favorite toy, the Whirl Wheel, which she hasn't set eyes on for four months. Off she swam to get it.



Hurrying, of course, to make sure none of the other dogs beat her to it.



And then, of course, she had to guard it, which mostly involved standing around on the edge of the pool - and, incidentally, resting.



After a few swims, we joined the others who had moved on to the grassy area. I thought Penny might race around with the dogs who were playing chasey, but she preferred to take it quietly with the humans.



And I'm pleased to say she seemed fine the next day.

Swimming to build stamina

Penny's lost a lot of fitness over the last few months of recovery from surgery, so we're going to try to swim regularly.

When our vet nurse at Dogs in Motion in Doveton asked whether Penny was used to swimming, I said yes.

Well, I didn't consider a few factors:
1. Penny is now much less fit than she was six months ago.
2. This is a different situation, requiring steady laps rather than just fun in the water.
3. There are also other dogs swimming laps around the edge of the pool.

Luckily, they are careful to show you what to do.

Here she is, ready to go. She wears a collar provided for us and is on a longer than usual lead. The collar is tight and high on her neck, and she has a swim jacket to give her confidence.




And she swam well.



But the humans didn't do such a good job. All the other dogs seemed to manage to swim past the steps if they were doing more than one lap. But Penny, who was supposed to do two and then rest, tried to scramble out each time she passed the steps.

We've decided that we'll have the command "get out" when it's the right time for her to do that, and our vet nurse suggested the command 'not yet' for the times when she seems to be heading for the steps at the wrong time.

I guess we'll get used to it.



The other complication is that we're slow and the other dogs overtake, so we have to lay the lead down on the concrete and stand still so the other human steps over the lead and passes us. All this with Penny splashing and scrambling because she can't understand why we're suddenly holding her back.

Hmmm... will I have a person with a camera handy when I eventually tumble into the swimming pool?

first bath after surgery

Last weekend, Penny had her first afternoon off-lead in the garden, a wonderful day for us all.

She enjoyed the warm sunshine and mooched around finding sticks while her humans tried to make inroads into the massive growth of weeds swallowing up our backyard since these wonderful rains began.

She enjoyed a roll in rotting wet mulch, resulting in such a ghastly smell that we had to give her the first bath since surgery.

twelve weeks after surgery!

Hooray! We've made it to the twelve-week mark after Penny's surgery. The surgeon said after this period we could 'start to return Penny to her usual activities' - whatever that means!

However, the physiotherapist says sixteen weeks is a safer length of time, so I'll go by her recommendation. When I look at this video of Penny walking in the underwater treadmill, I can see that she is still favoring her left rear leg.



So I guess it'll be a few more weeks of the treadmill and of staying on lead whevever she is out of the house. (However, I did let her walk beside me off-lead down a local lane today, because it is quiet and straight and not too interesting. It was so-o wonderful to have her walking free beside me.)

The vet nurse who supervises the treadmill says that the water takes seventy percent of the dog's weight, so the treadmill gives her a chance to walk steadily for fifteen minutes, and of course the warm water not only provides resistance and muscle-building capactiy, but it's also comforting for a sore or aching leg.

weaving as therapy for Penny after her cruciate operation

Who'd have thought, six months ago, that we'd be thrilled with a thirty-five minute slow walk to the park, with Penny on lead? It just goes to show it's all relative. After ten weeks' rehabilitation from her traditional extracapsular cruciate operation, walking has become the highlight of our day.

I thought we'd add something extra yesterday, so we did some weaving between the poles along the edge of the park, with the idea that as she changed direction she'd be shifting her weight from side to side.



We might have done more, except that the heavens opened and we got half-drowned in the deluge. (Still welcome, though. We know southern Australia is still in drought, even if it's raining at the moment.)

steady progress by Penny

Penny today passes the ten-week mark since the extracapsular surgery on her cruciate ligament! Now she is allowed to walk daily for thirty minutes!

However, we still need to go at a slow pace. The physiotherapist says she can move to a trot next week, as long as she is putting her weight on all four legs and doesn't show any lameness.

Another big step (here comes a pun!) is that she is now allowed to go up and down a couple of steps. We'll leave our handy ramp in place, but I've cut back the foliage from the two steps that had become overgrown in the last four months and this evening we used the steps.



Our physio has suggested that we never again throw balls for Penny to chase, never let her jump into the car and never let her jump onto furniture. A few months ago I would have been very sad to think of these limitations, but over the last weeks I've seen that Penny can be happy without all the activities we used to do, so I think we can live with these restrictions.

at last, a walk in the park after cruciate surgery!

On Sunday, two of her humans led Penny up into the car on her ramp, and set off, not for the vet... not for physiotherapy... but for a walk!

Yes, a walk in a park.

Unfortunately, by the time we walked, ever so slowly, from our carpark spot to the entrance to the park, and read the scary notice, eleven minutes had passed, which is half of our walking time at this stage.



So we turned back. Did Penny care? Not on your life! She loved the whole experience and went into an orgy of sniffing, and weeing to let other dogs know she'd been there. We actually said hello to a couple of calm dogs, which was great, since Penny hasn't really interacted with other dogs since about June.




There was a lovely set of posts that would be just right for doing some weaving, which I'll ask the physiotherapist about today. I think weaving is good somewhere along the line, because it reteaches her to be aware of her rear end.

Penny walked around a whole block today

Well, what a red letter day! Penny and I set off slow-ly heading down the hill to the end of our street and made it around a whole block.

Dr James St Clair says hill work is important for strengthening the quadriceps and hamstrings, which help support the knee, so I thought we'd better venture a little further today. Our house is on the top of a hill, with a gentle slope in one direction and a steeper slope in the other, so we took the gentle slope.

Penny can go at a slightly faster pace now and still put her weight on her injured leg, so we actually managed to go around in a circle and come home a different way, instead of our usual glacial pace to and fro in our own street.

One small step for a dog, one giant leap for canine-kind. Well, it was quite a lot of small steps, actually, but you get the idea...

going for very slow walks after surgery

I was looking at this video clip I took last week of Penny setting off for a short walk with one of her humans and I was interested to see how clearly it shows the need to go at a slow pace after extracapsular surgery for her torn cruciate ligament.

When Penny came off the ramp, she hopped instead of using her left leg, and when her human picked up the pace a little at the end of the driveway, Penny once again hurried along without exercising the leg that has lost muscle tone.

We've been told that walking is a way to build up stamina and strength, but that it still needs to be very slow at this stage.

the doggy door is closed

Well, it seems we were too optimistic in opening the doggy door for Penny. Yesterday she raced around the corner to go out through it, slipped and got stuck half-way - which would have been funny in the past, but wasn't so funny now that she's had an operation on her knee.

But we didn't stress too much - just settled her down on her mat for some lovely grooming and placed ice-packs either side of the knee.

Today she seemed fine, so we set off for our twice-weekly walk on the underwater treadmill.

And they were having a photo shoot! Penny pricked up her ears at the sight of a camera - I'm sure all you blogging dogs know that when humans get the camera out, treats may be not too far away. I'm hoping I might get a copy of some of the pictures that were taken of Penny.

a step towards full recovery

Today was a big day in the story of Penny's recovery from cruciate ligament surgery. As of our visit to the physiotherapist yesterday, she is allowed to go for a twelve minute walk each day!

We set off as a group - Penny and two of her humans - after much bustle and preparation, and went slow-ly around the corner to the local school. Six slo-o-w minutes to get there and six slo-o-w minutes back. We have to go slowly because if she gets up any speed she doesn't use the operated leg, just hurries along on three legs.

Who'd have thought, six months back, that a hundred-metre walk would be so exciting?

AND...

In the afternoon there was the official opening of the doggy door so Penny can go out onto the back patio by herself, without being on lead. We'll only let her go out at the moment when one of her humans is sitting at the back door working on her tapestry. She (the human) is just back from a wonderful textiles tour of Turkey and is slaving away at the tapestry, in order to get if finished in the next couple of weeks, so there should be plenty of opportunities for Penny to go in and out.

underwater treadmill and cruciate rehabilitation

Penny's gaining confidence in the underwater treadmill. Here's a clip of her third session (we're going twice a week at the moment).



It's interesting to compare with her gait back in August, before the surgery, when we were trying conservative management and trying to avoid surgery.

trying out the ramp in the car for the first time

Today we're off to the vet for the fourth and last anti-inflammatory injection that is part of Penny's recovery from extracapsular surgery on her left knee, so in anticipation of the trip we practised using the new ramp to get into the car. I thought getting in would be easy, as she is used to the see-saw and the 'dog walk' in agility, and also because we have been using our own makeshift ramp for weeks now.

But she surprised me at how quickly she decided it was not scary to walk down the ramp!

the big underwater treadmill for dogs

Penny had physiotherapy last Tuesday and we learned some gentle exercises to practise at home. Basically they consist of helping her to shift her weight to her injured leg, which has lost about a third of muscle mass since she injured herself, or maybe since the cruciate repair operation 22 days ago. For instance, one exercise is to get her to stand and to then gently press on her right hip so her weight shifts subtly to her left rear leg. It's such a small movement that it would be impossible to see whether it was working, if not for the fact that her fur has been shaved off and I can see the tiny tensing of her thigh muscle.

Another exercise is to get her to stand on three legs for one second, by lifting her front right leg off the ground. We were making heavy weather of this one, as she would always sit. But then inspiration struck and I realised it is just like the 'marching' routine we practised for canine freestyle. Hsin-Yi and Honey the Great Dane have a video of how to teach this trick. As a therapy move, Penny needs to do it standing, not sitting, of course, which is the final stage of Honey's video.

The good thing about the exercises is that Penny has fun, and I feel as if I am helping her to pass the time and to recover her muscle tone.

The big event of the week, however, was our session on the underwater treadmill after our first physio appointment. I was a bit disappointed that Penny was fearful of the experience, given that she was so confident on her first try some weeks ago, before the surgery. I think I gave the therapists an overly optimistic opinion of how she would go. Also, she didn't have a weak knee last time. And, thirdly, this treadmill is larger.

There were two positives about the experience, though. One, the therapist got into the water with her to help her settle down. And, two, Penny got some delicious treats to make it a pleasant memory.



We're going again tomorrow, but to a different location. I won't take videos this time, but will focus on helping Penny to enjoy it.