Recovery Day 7

Doggy McDog Face is doing great.

As we move into a complete week post op, I have zero complaints about his progress. Except that he doesn't want to sit still.

From other blogs I have read, this is not the most common thing. Most dogs are 3 to 6 weeks post op before they feel as good as Dante does.

When we left Guardian Vet Centre with our care plan Dante was on Tramadol for pain, Metacam for muscle anti inflammatory and pain and an antibiotic so prevent infection from the surgery.

The Tramadol was only for 4 days, but since we had some from before the surgery we gave it to him for an extra day. This morning was the first morning with no Tramadol, only the Metacam and I was surprised that he didn't seem to notice. Of course he could have been slightly less comfortable, but he didn't let me know. We gave him half a tramadol before bed, just so he would have something and wouldn't be cut off cold turkey, in hopes he would get a good sleep. We are no longer sleeping on the living room floor, he is back to his dog bed at the foot of our bed. One day he dreams to be able to use his dog stool to get up on the people bed again.

Since we have made it to a week post op, we are allowed to exercise a bit more, so we have been making twice daily trips to the gate.

Dante is scared of ice packs, so I haven't been icing his knees like at all. Which I feel bad about, I am going to do it tomorrow at least once. He just hates the crinkly noise the ice pack makes, giant puss puss.

I booked the appointment to get Dante's staples out for next Monday. He has an appointment with Dr.Pam to have a manual adjustment and ACCUPUNCTURE after that. YIKES, they are gonna needle my dog! Scary stuff, turning him into a living pin cushion, but I'll try it once and see if he likes it or if it helps. He lost pretty much all of the muscle mass in his body during his injured time, so I want to make sure he gets it back properly and is in no pain due to it.

Tomorrow progress pictures of his bruising!

Recovery Day 6

Dante is ready to start training for a marathon.
Or at least he thinks so. I'm sure if he had the chance he would run.

We made him a path out of carpet to a few different blankets so he can lay down in different spots. He is so over being cooped up, and I don't blame him. The end of May to the beginning of August is a long time for a dog to not be able to run or go outside really. Specially when summer is his favourite.



We have had to lock him in the living room just so he will lay down and quit moving for awhile. He is still only supposed to be doing 2-3 5 minute walks a day, and he's cutting laps of the house.

The bruising is starting to go down, thank god. I was worried he was internally bleeding or something for awhile. His incisions look great too, EXCEPT one staple is starting to come out. I can't necesarilly blame him, it could have got caught on something like the carpet, but he has been caught twice licking his knees. So it is cone of shame time for this guy.

Recovery Day 3 - 5

TPLO surgery is magic.
Expensive magic, but magic done the less.

Dante is doing so much better every day.

Day 3 - cuddles and relaxing. It is hard for Dante to get comfortable, he cant decide where he wants to lay, its hot out so his dog bed makes him sweat.


Day 4 - he wants to move move move! He wants to walk around everywhere. We are forced to trying and confine him because we don't want him to over do it.



Day 5 - He is the happiest dog alive. You can see that the stress from having his knees injured is no longer bothering him. He wants to go outside and hang out and do dog stuff. The cone of shame makes him sad, so we trying to let him not wear it as much as possible, but have to keep an eye on him so he doesn't stress lick his front paws or do anything to his incisions.

Recovery Day 2 - July 28

Day Two.

Now that we know Dante can walk and poop on his own its great.
Our second night was better than the first, he slept more, but I would wake up with him just starring at me, so I would go cuddle him.

I have read that some dogs need help getting from the lay down position, but Dante has been able to do so since day 1. Maybe because he was so used to pain from his knees being hurt for about 2 months prior.

The bruising is worse which worries me. But I imagine it is normal is it is such an invasive surgery. His recovery papers say some bruising is normal, I am not sure how much some is... but he is purple.



His first bandage came off today, it was coming off and sticking to the carpet so I ripped it off. He has 11 staples in this knee.

The First Night

I read most dogs scream and cry the first night home after surgery.

Ways to make me lose my effing mind - my dog crying all night. So I decided we would camp on the living room floor with him.

He didn't cry, but he did stare at me all night. I don't feel like he got much sleep, but neither did I so we evened out.

Boden was only 7.5 weeks old so he still wakes up to eat every 3 hours or so, so he living room floor camped with us too. We were cute as hell to be honest.

The night before taking Dante out to pee had been a nightmare. We tried to use his belly band to support him so he didn't have to put pressure on his legs, what a mistake... PISS ALL OVER EVERYTHING. All over Brendon, Dante, the belly band, the side walk, some towels... ME... Eff the belly band, I read online Dante should be able to walk... It was time to walk.

Dante's first walk

Once I stopped trying to help he did just fine. I was mostly concerned how he was going to poop. Squatting with two freshly chopped up shin bones wouldn't be fun. He didn't poop the first time, only peed. But my the 3rd time we went out that day he pooped, it looked like it hurt to squat but he did it on his own. When I tried to hold his hips for support he looked at me like 

"WTF Mom I'm trying to poop here, maybe some privacy?!"

His bruising was bad. I called him 'Senior Purple ass'

The main thing I was concerned about was wound care after the surgery. It is actually like non existent. Wound care includes - Don't let him rip his staples out.

He was sent home with bandages, those come off in about two days, or on their own will.

Day 1 - he rests. Mostly on his bed in the living room. He isn't a very happy guy, you can tell he is sore. But it is just the beginning of the journey.

Time to Come Home

July 27th, I was SO gun ho to go pick up our boy.

I made arrangements to meet with Jessy and play pokemon for an hour and a half before we went to pick up Dante. So we would definintely be there on time, and so I wouldn't be pacing around the house like a crazy person waiting for 2 pm to come along.

As we were playing outside we watched the storm blow it. First lightening in the distance, then light rain. By the time we got to the vet, it was full blown pouring. I put Boden in her truck, so it was Jessy - her two older kids 5 and 6, her baby Archer who is 14 weeks and Boden who was 7 weeks. Thats a handful, but it was only supposed to take me a minute! Wrong...

I went in, and they sent for Dante. The vet tech came and went over his after care with me. Although she pretty much just read me the instructions I was sent home with, I guess some people don't read things and need to have them read to them? I don't know, I guess it's a thing.

Then I waited for Dante, I was sitting in the waiting room... well waiting... for like 15 minutes. I thought I might get a bark of joy when he saw me, but I honestly didn't even see him come out. I heard another dog bark, and I looked up. Dante was standing there, cone of shame on... he looked weak and sore and sad. There was no bark of joy from him, he looked at me like ' wtf mom you left me here and you have no idea the shit I have been through since then.'

The idea was to walk him straight out to the car. But the heavens had opened up and RAINNNNNN was coming down.

In between the time that I recieved Dante's instructions and the time he came out I went and moved the car closer to the door. In that 3 minutes I was so soaked from the rain that my bra was wet all the way through, and my hair was dripping wet.

There was no way I could take Dante out in that, on top of him being scared of thunder, it was raining so hard I couldn't subject his poor freshly cut up knees to that. He would have had a mental break down.



So we waited....
and waiteddddd...

Jessy and I were messaging trying to come up with plans. But short of driving my car into the vet, there was no really good option.

I had just set her stroller on mine in the back of my car, the hatch wouldn't close all the way, I figured it would be fine, looked out the window - the hatch was wide open.... so I flooded my car too, that's fun.

Brendon got off work early because the storm was so bad. The power had gone off in the vet office, and it was permanently out down town where he was working. We decided that Brendon was just going to come and carry Dante straight out to his jeep, and it would be done. I can carry Dante, but lets face it, he is 60 lbs... I am only just over double that. If I tried to carry a freshly surgeried Dog out to my car, open the door and put him in there with two strollers in it, in a terrential down pour... it wasn't gonna work....

So we waited.


Soaking wet shameless selfies while stranded at the vet.

Finally in a moment of truth, the rain stopped for just a minute. I ran out, re-adjusted the strollers and came in and got Dante. It was the first time I walked with him after his surgery. It was sad. He had a belly band to help take the weight off his legs. Between that and his leash we hobbled out of there, everyone that saw us felt bad for him, poor guy with both knees all bandaged up. A nice lady opened the door and we were off.

The ride home was interesting, it started raining really hard again as soon as I got in the car. That was ok though we were in, and that's all we needed.

Our total wait time at the vet waiting for the rain to stop ended up being about 45 minutes. Jessy is a brave lady to have all those kids in her car in the parking lot for 45 minutes. Thank god she was there.

We had to drive through washed out lanes on the way home. Thank god we went over the bridges though. Under the 99th street bridge, the one we went over, there were 3 cars stuck in the water as the underpasses were literally over flowing.


Just to give an idea of how much water there actually was.

When we got home I carried Dante into the house. He stayed in bed the remainder of the day. He was sad and hurting and didn't want to move. He needed rest, so we let him be and just gave him some water and love.

He never lost his appetite which we were grateful for.



Dante had an epidural for pain relief, between that and the hair they needed to shave to do that surgery... he has a pretty funky hair cut.

The Big Day

The first time we took Dante to the vet for his knees was May 25th by July 26th he was off to get what I call a double knee replacement, because when I say bilateral TPLO people give me the crooked eyebrow, it's something you really have to have time to explain.

The morning of Dante's surgery we were instructed to have him there between 7 - 8 AM.
Brendon went into work late so we could both drop him off, we pretty much just gave him a big hug, paid the entire cost of the surgery upfront, and handed him over.... that  was that.

They called me around 12:45 pm to tell me that Dante had made it out of surgery successfully and they were waking him up. It felt like eternity waiting for that phone call.

Luckily my auntie and uncle came over and distracted us from the fact that our dog son was not home.

It was a long sleepless night for me thinking about our boy being all alone in a kennel and in pain, I just had to patiently wait until 2 pm the next day until I could pick him up and bring him home.

I decided to ask my friend Jessy to watch Boden the baby in the car when I went to pick Dante up. So I could give him and the aftercare instructions my full attention. And it turns out it was a good damn thing I did!!

That is a story for the next blog....