This is neither a cart nor a carting breed!

Bernese Mountain Dog - NOT.

Elliott continues to progress in his recovery from ACL surgery. One of the biggest problems we have right now is that he has lost a lot of muscle on the surgical leg. He still goes to therapy and does work on the underwater treadmill, but we are now trying new ways to challenge different muscles in his leg and rebuild the muscle. One of the things we have been given the ok to do by our rehab vet, Dr. Leslie Woodcock, is to work sets of stairs every day as exercise. Another way to get him to dig in on the surgical leg in a controlled fashion is to have him pull a weight. She suggested a wagon or a toboggan with some books on it.

A great friend at work who is very sympathetic to Elliott and his rehab, and who has a whole passel of human children, loaned me one of her kids' toboggans so we could try having him pull it on our lawn. This morning Paul and I got Elliott suited up in his harness and set about trying to get Elliott to pull this toboggan. For now we are not putting any extra weight on the toboggan because it in itself weighs about 8-10 lbs. That's enough to start with.



Hooking up his harness to the toboggan with 2 leashes through the holes on the toboggan.

I was quite surprised that Elliott did not mind in the least when we hooked this thing up to him and did not freak out or even blink twice about us asking him to then pull it around the yard. I could see that it definitely made him work his surgical leg in a new way, but still in a controlled way. I think we will try to do this every other day to see if it will help to build up some muscle in his leg. If he becomes very good at it we can add a little more weight.

Quite the sight to see an English Springer Spaniel pulling a toboggan! Maybe this is an area for future competition!



What are you doing back there?



Coming, Dad!!!!!

Tried to Make Me Go To Rehab

I said.... ok. Sure. Here is Elliott working hard on the treadmill.

Future Fab Feathers

Watch this space. Baby feathers forming after three months. At this
rate both sides might match in a year or so. Sigh.

Hills and stairs and green grass

Elliott is continuing to make progress in his recovery. At our rehab
visit last week, we got the go-ahead to start doing carpeted stairs,
once or twice a day, on a short leash in a controlled manner, SLOWLY.
Since then Elliott has been downstairs to the land of the big tv a
couple of times, and upstairs to the bedroom a couple of times. No
getting into the bed yet, though! We are also walking farther and
walking on hills. This has expanded our range to nicer grassy areas
where the geese hiss at us as we walk past their goslings. Tonight was
perfect for walking and we had a good number of things to sniff. Our
Ruff Wear harness looks good in any setting! In case you are wondering
about Elliott's collar, let me just say I do not use a prong collar on
a regular basis and haven't had it out of the closet for many years.
However, during this recovery, one of the most important elements in
staying sane is having the tools you need to keep your post-ACL dog's
body under complete control until healing is complete. Elliott has
many titles but is not always gentlemanly with the neighbour dogs we
meet while walking near our house. I need to be able to walk him with
complete confidence in my ability to prevent him from spinning round
in excitement or from jumping up and bouncing around. The prong gets
his respect instantly. When he is all healed and can't re-injure
himself and create a need to redo arduous, expensive, and traumatic
surgery, the prong can go back into the closet.

Therapy Today

Elliott is doing so well with his recovery and rehab. Today he spent
time on the blue round knobby wobbly thingie, then did some shallow
stairs for the first time, and used his surgical leg to push off and
climb. He did 12 minutes on the underwater treadmill and was relaxed
and walking steadily the entire time. The circumference of his leg has
increased by one centimetre and his good leg has gotten a bit smaller,
meaning that it is doing less work now that the surgical leg is
starting to do more work. This is great progress. We are almost
finished five weeks of the initial eight weeks of no uncontrolled
activity torture!

Treadmill Front View

Treadmill from the front complete with reflection.

Therapy part 2

The other major activity tonight was walking on the underwater
treadmill. Tonight Elliott did 8 minutes, a slight increase over last
week's 6 minutes. Tonight we also turned on the jets after the walk
and he got a bit of massage that way. He was quite calm tonight in the
water; last week he wasn't sure what was going on!

Therapy part 1

Tonight Elliott had his second visit to Dr. Leslie Woodcock's rehab
clinic in Aberfoyle. He worked on a few things -one was this wobble
board that has little bumps all over it. This helps to re-teach his
brain that it is ok to use his left leg again.

Hanging Out

Life is a bit slower when recovery from cruciate surgery is the centre of your life. We walk 3 times a day, but we walk slowly. We do exercises on Elliott's leg, and we do them slowly. We spend more time just hanging out together. English Springer Spaniels are often caricatured as crazy, busy, insanely overactive dogs. While this can be one aspect of their personalities, it should never be the primary trait in a well-bred Springer. One of the things that English Springer Spaniels excel at is the art of just hanging out, sniffing the pathway and taking things slowly when appropriate. ESSes are cuddlers par excellence. Here is an example of our fast-paced life at the moment.

Walkies

Until Elliott heals, we have to control him very closely inside the
house as well as outside. When we walk him, he wears a Ruffwear
harness that has a handle on the back. We can attach a short lead to
the harness and control him with 2 leashes. He is adapting
wonderfully to the changes in his routine.

Leg Healing Nicely

We are surprised at how beautifully Elliott's incision is healing.
This is day 10 post surgery.

Morning Massage

Somewhere within this mass of feathers, Elliott is enjoying his
morning passive range of motion exercises and his massage and tummy
rubs!

Elliott is Already Out of Surgery

It's only 4:15 and Elliott is already awake from his surgery. We delivered him to the vet, met the personable and knowledgeable Dr. Joe, and lectured him about how important Elliott is to us. We left the vet close to 3pm. Dr. Caron called us a few minutes ago to let us know that the surgery went very well. There was very little arthritic change in the joint. There is no damage to the meniscus. The tear was about 50 percent. The surgery went very smoothly, no problems, and Elliott woke up very smoothly and calmly with no complications from the anaethesia.
Now, if we can get through the next 2-3 months without a reinjury, it should all be good.

Paul has gone to the store to buy me a large industrial size package of M&Ms, comfort food of choice during times like this.

Will post more tomorrow. Thank you everyone who was busy thinking good thoughts today.

Living on the Main

Our living room post-prep. One of us will be sleeping next to Elliott
as he will not be able to do any stairs for a while.

Too Much Information

About a year ago, Elliott and Sadie were flying at a thousand miles an hour in the dog park. It was a cold and icy day and Elliott slipped and fell at one point but got right back up again. Afterwards he had a little bit of lameness. We took him to the vet who thought it was a soft tissue injury. The mild lameness, that he would walk out within a minute, continued off and on during the year. We took him for chiropractic treatments which helped a lot. We also did warm up and cool down routines before and after exercise and training which helped a lot. We saw good improvement but not a disappearance of the problem. In the summer time I even asked our vet if it could be a cruciate injury but there was nothing to indicate that.

About 2 weeks ago, Elliott's cousins Libby and Tom were over to visit and the four of them were flying at a thousand miles an hour in our icy cold backyard. Elliott came in on 3 legs. After about 3 or 4 days he still was lame and would not bear weight on the sore leg. We went to the vet and this time there was ample evidence to suggest a cruciate injury. X-rays showed the beginning of arthritic changes and the vet did a test on his leg called a "drawer" test which shows if there is too much movement in the joint.

So, now we think that the injury a year ago was probably a very tiny tear to his ligament. These ligaments cannot heal themselves. They cannot regenerate or grow back together. In a very small dog the joint may stabilize to the point where the dog is not in too much pain and can function pretty much ok. In a dog Elliott's size, and in a dog who competes in some sort of sport like obedience, you have to repair the joint.

We have visited a canine rehabilitation specialist, and had a surgical consult with an expert in these repairs. We have chosen a method of repair and arranged surgery. Elliott will be having his operation tomorrow afternoon.

I would be so thankful to anyone who would keep a good thought for our boy during this time. The most challenging part of all this will be the recovery period of eight weeks during which time he cannot have any uncontrolled exercise in case he re-injures himself.