Our Black Lab's Recovery from CUE Surgery - Week 8

Today is our Week 8 update on R's recovery from CUE surgery. In general, he's getting better and better. He's allowed to be off-leash in the house when we're not expecting anything exciting to happen like the UPS man driving down to the house or one of us getting home.

He's also allowed to go for 25 minute walks 2-3X per day, and he's allowed 5 minutes off-leash outdoors per day. That's a wildcard that makes us nervous. Yesterday, he really sprinted during those 5 minutes and made himself a bit sore. However, the x-rays taken last week show that the hardware is strongly fixed in the bones of his elbow so he can't destroy his "new elbow" by running too hard.

R galloping 2 years ago

I've made a video of his gait to show what he looks like now. The hardest part is that he's no longer focused on walking. He feels good enough that he's looking for squirrels and bunnies so he rarely walks at a steady pace or straight! I found a couple of clips when he was walking straight to show you.

I also show his new exercises in the video. He's still doing many from last week but there are new ones now (woe is me!!!). The hardest one is doing a sit-stand-sit transition on the squishy blue disk. It took us about 4 days before he could even sit on it. Then another few days passed before he could stand at all (yesterday was his first "stand"). It's incredibly hard for him but he doesn't give up. I've tried it with Shyla, and she can do it easily so R's difficulties with it are due to his surgery.

Finally, he got a new toy, a giant "peanut", that he puts his front paws on and does various exercises. You'll see in the video that we're not very good at those yet. Apparently, before too long, he won't need me to stabilize the peanut while he works. However, that is VERY hard to believe right now!

If you look in the background of the video while we are working on the peanut, you'll see a GIANT print of R on the wall (the same photo as I showed above). I gave it to the Runner as a gift - but now it's like an inspiration as we toil away at his exercises. Our goal is to have him run like that again!

Here is the video, which you can watch here or at Youtube.

Thanks for watching!!! And, if any of you have experience with teaching a dog how to use a peanut and have hints for me, I'd love to hear them!!! Thank you.