R can Run!!!!

With the craziness of this week, I forgot to tell you the most important piece of news. R finally went for his first run since his surgery. He and the Runner have run together for 5 minutes each day since getting permission from the surgeon earlier this week. Yipee!!!!

R is not yet doing any off-leash running so I probably won't have new photos of him running for a while. His surgery was very serious, and we are proceeding very slowly with his return to running. He was born with elbow dysplasia and had his first surgery as a pup. Then, as usually happens with elbow dysplasia, his elbow steadily degenerated over the past five years. Even early surgical intervention is no cure for elbow dysplasia.

For anyone who knows about elbow dysplasia, this will probably make sense to you. His ulna's coronoid process was fractured into three pieces and detached from the rest of the bone. Moreover, multiple other bone chips were floating around in the elbow joint space. He had no cartilage remaining on the end of his humerus (the upper forelimb bone). Needless to say, the surgeon labeled R's elbow dysplasia "Grade 5", which is as bad as it can get.

We are hopeful that the recent surgery that removed all the bone pieces and attempted to stimulate cartilage growth will give R more active years. If it doesn't, there is a completely new surgery, called "CUE" surgery, that essentially takes the pressure off of R's cartilage and puts it onto surgically implanted surfaces. We hope not to need this surgery because it has been done on relatively few dogs so far. There is no long-term data about how dogs fare with this surgery.

But, for the moment, things are looking good!!! And, in the spirit of a dog, I will smile about that and rejoice that R has begun to run again!

Happy Friday to all of you!