CLIMBING HER WAY BACK

So we have just ended the first full week of Terra's recovery

I'm happy to say things are going very well. I've been able to expand her walks to 10 minutes, still on a very short leash and still only on flat surfaces. Her walking looks good; she's putting a lot of weight on the bad foot and it seems aligned pretty well

I'm noticing that when she sits, that foot is going out on an angle but in the next week I will be able to give her exercises to improve that.

She can move safely around the house with all the rugs and all but we still have to watch her when she wants to jump on the furniture. Her vet advised that jumping up like that must be strictly curtailed until her medical re-check at eight weeks

Eight. Weeks. We just started week two

We've been having her sleep in her kennel at night and I've been sleeping out there with her but her nights are awesome, no pain and no restlessness

Next week I'm going back to work and I'll be sleeping back in my bed (sometimes I stand in the doorway and stare wistfully at it) She can certainly sleep in the bedroom, she has a bed in there but the problem is her jumping up on to our bed. Verbotten.

So we're going to have to manage this carefully. She has certain triggers for the bed jumping. One of them is, after Collette has let her out for her morning pee, Terra wants to jump on to the bed with me. So Collette will close the door and leave her in the bed room

Changes like that

Speaking of the morning pee brings us to another situation. Terra is still not allowed to go up or down the stairs which, of course, is how she gets to her pee spot. I've been carrying her up and down the stairs but that is something that Collette, with her bad knee and arm, cannot do

The vet sent us home with a belly sling, called a GingerLead, that we are supposed to use to help Terra get up and down the stairs

The idea is that the sling allows you to take some pressure off that rear leg. You pull up on it and the leg comes up as well, so the dog is not putting full pressure on the leg. Let's say it's a learning process. Going down the stairs is pretty good but as I lead Terra up, she wants to put both back legs together an hop.

I'm finding it difficult to judge how much pressure I'm actually taking off the leg. If anyone has any experience with these slings, or similar, I would love to hear from you

Now just looking forward to the next milestone