Our black dog continues to do wonderfully since his CUE (elbow) surgery 9 months ago.
We were surprised, however, by how much he was set back by his 2 week complete rest due to minor surgery recently. We've been gradually bringing him back up to speed, and he's doing well!
We've come to realize that we need to continue doing his strengthening exercises for him to be able to live life to the fullest. We previously called them "rehab" exercises, and now we think of them as maintenance exercises. We have a strengthening program where he alternates exercise sets day by day.
I made a short video of the exercises that he does. I realized after I made it that the wobble board exercises are the most fascinating to watch, and they're at the end. So, you might want to watch all the way through to get to them!
We really hope that this program keeps him sprinting full speed ahead for a long time!
R's CUE surgery for his congenital elbow dysplasia was 7 months ago! He's made incredible progress in that time. He can run further and faster now than he's been able to do for years.
In fact, R and the Runner did a big run while we were in Utah. They ran up about 2000' over 4.8 miles of very rocky terrain to an incredible lookout point. Then, they walked back down, for a total of about 9.6 miles. The Runner decided to walk rather than run down because downhill running abuses joints more than almost anything else. R looked great with no limping after that outing, his longest since a year before his surgery.
We have continued R's rehab program because keeping his stabilizing muscles as strong as possible will help keep the implants inside his elbow healthy for longer. R is now 9 years old - an age when many Labs have stopped running and romping - but he's looking better and is running further than he has in years.
I included this update on his rehab as part of the Positive Dog Training Blog Hop because I could never have taught him to do all these exercises without the skills that I've gained as a positive trainer. Positive training has been a gift to us throughout his rehab. I've been thankful that I know about it a zillion times when teaching him new exercises. Quite simply, it would not be possible to teach these complicated exercises without a clicker, treats, and positive training skills. The key is to break each of these exercises into tiny parts for teaching them - and then putting the parts together for the final exercise. You are seeing only the final exercise in the video.
The toughest thing that I'm teaching him now is to walk sideways with all four paws up on his big yellow peanut (last thing on the video). I have been teaching it one step at a time. I roll the peanut a little to the side, and I say "step", which means to take a lateral step with front and hind limbs to stay on top of the peanut. If he takes the step, he gets a treat. He's making great progress.
You'll see in the short video that I still reward him with treats regularly during the exercises. The main reason is that the rewards keep him motivated. R is really tired by the end of a session, and I have to push him to do one more rep or one more exercise. I "push him" by rewarding him lavishly.
You can watch the short video either here or at Youtube.
When we decided to have R get CUE surgery for his congenital elbow dysplasia, I never visualized the amount of time we'd spend rehabbing him afterwards. We are now 6 months post-surgery. He walks with no visible limp. When he's not tired, he trots and gallops better than for the two years before the surgery. The journal articles about this surgery say that he won't reach 100% until a full year post-surgery.
This improvement is because the surgeon put new weight-bearing surfaces inside his elbow. It's also because we've worked so incredibly hard with him on strengthening his body. We also keep him very light to reduce the stress on his joints, as you can see in the photo of him galloping across Hug Hill.
While we did his exercises today, I videoed almost everything. I thought that you might enjoy seeing the range of exercises that he does - and also how much training I've had to do to teach him how to execute the exercises.
As you'll see, some exercises target his left front limb, the one that had surgery. You'll see me holding up his right front limb at times to force him to bear a lot of weight with his left front. You'll also see that some of his exercises are now pointed at strengthening his core and teaching him better coordination of his hind end. The reason is that a stronger core and a stronger hind end will help him to move in a balanced way that protects his surgical limb.
As you'll see in the video, R and I have tons of fun doing his exercises. He "complains", sometimes loudly, about the hard ones. I can verbally encourage him to keep working when he's very tired. He and I have formed quite a bond through doing his daily exercises together.
We've purchased all of his rehab equipment from a company called "FitPaws". Just this week, his stability disc sprung a leak - not surprising after all we've put it through. I contacted the company to ask how to patch it. Instead, they sent me a free replacement disc that arrived within 18 hours! Now that's amazing customer service!
Here's our video. I hope that you enjoy seeing R in action!
Today is a special Black Dog Sunday. The reason is that I am feeling so happy with how strong R has become over the past months. We are still doing lots of exercises to strengthen the muscles around his surgical elbow. The exercises are getting progressively more circus-like because the main thing that he needs to master now is using all the little muscles around his elbow to keep it stable. I'll make another video of his progress and exercises sometime soon.
The biggest thing is that he's not limping very much. Here's an example of how he played with Shyla during our recent vacation.
Shyla was chasing R, trying to get the ball. R could make tight enough turns to keep Shyla just behind him despite the fact that she's a faster runner.
Ah, how I love seeing this sight. After spending the first 4 months of this year trying to get his CUE (elbow) surgery set up and then every month after that doing 30-60 minutes of exercises with him per day, I simply grin when I seem him run so happily. It's all been worth it. And, he didn't even limp after this sprinting and chasing session!
Thanks to all of you for your kind comments about yesterday's unfortunate incident. It appears that the sheriff's department isn't planning to follow up on it, and now the evidence is gone. So, we have to tackle the larger problem - the destructive vagrants who are inhabiting our forests. I'm okay - although I've been in a terrible mood ever since it happened.
For today, I want to show you a video of R's rehabilitation from his CUE surgery 16 weeks ago. I don't show his gait in the video because it is so variable. It can look perfect, and it can look like he has a huge limp. Usually, he looks really good in the morning, and his limp gets worse as the day goes on. Our vet says that pattern suggests that muscle fatigue is one reason for the limp.
I still work with him for a long time every day on a series of exercises to strengthen the muscles in his left forelimb (the limb that had surgery). The exercises are getting pretty advanced so I am thankful that I've learned how to clicker train a dog. It's made these exercises possible!!!
My favorite exercise is the first one on the video. He crawls under a long train of chairs to get to a handful of kibble that I placed under the last chair. Then he crawls backward to the start of the train, and he gets a jackpot of treats from me there. We started this exercise with just one chair, and I've added about a chair per week! The hardest part is the "reverse crawling" because he's tempted to bail out from the side of the chairs.
You'll notice in the video that he vocalizes in way that sounds like a growl at times. He makes that noise when an exercise is either physically or mentally hard for him. It's not a growl at me!!!
Although the amount of time I spend rehabbing him sometimes weighs on me, I have truly loved teaching him how to do all these exercises. He and I have become closer through this training process because we both enjoy it. I also love seeing the fruits of our labor when he can run beautifully like in this photo from a couple of weeks ago.
The exercises in the video were for weeks 12-16. Now we are starting new ones, mainly focusing on side-to-side strength and dexterity. He now has a wobble board. I'm training him to balance it by clicking and treating whenever he happens to get it balanced. He's already getting the idea, just three days into our training. The next video should be fun!
If anyone ever reads this because you are considering CUE surgery for your dog - realize that you will have to work hard with your dog to help make the surgery a success. R is already much better than before the surgery but he's not 100% yet. The research says he'll reach 100% around a year after the surgery.
The exercises are tiring - this was the look that he gave me when I woke him up from his post-exercise nap. What a soft-eyed and sleepy boy!
I've had some time with the Labraduo together this week, and it's been fun. They are such good friends. R is at the point where he can't do damage to the hardware inside his surgical elbow so I can let him play with his sister. We still have to be a bit careful because his surgical limb is still weaker than his other limbs.
The only downer was that R's limp returned almost immediately when we arrived home from our trip to Crested Butte. Our vet says that he was likely hiding his limp in CB because he was so excited by all the fun that we were having. She says (and we knew this prior to the surgery) that dogs who have had CUE surgery often continue to limp for months and months after the surgery. The one year mark is when the limp is almost always gone. That extremely long recovery time is why they scanned R's entire body for signs of cancer before we embarked on this journey.
As an aside - do you see the burned forest in the left side of the background?
We went to the vet for a rehab session on Friday, and she's so impressed with how much more muscle R has developed in his left front (surgical) limb in the past month or so. I am in the midst of making a video of his exercises from the past 3 weeks before we start our new regimen on Monday. The rehab exercises may never end :)
Actually, although I do complain sometimes about how long the exercises take, I truly enjoy training R to do them. He's a fast learner although his boredom and frustration threshold is very low. That means that I need to keep him entertained by constantly changing up the routine! It's fun for both of us.
I think that you understand the joy it gives me to see R romping with his sister.
He's 4 months post-CUE surgery. He still limps sometimes. Like today - he dug a hole worthy of being a bear den when he was done! That was a bit too much for his elbow so now he's limping. I try not to let that affect my spirits too much.
Now we are off to the vet for a rehab appointment. R has become a true "circus dog" in the past couple of weeks with his rehab exercises. I'll share a video soon!
After the wildfire, evacuation, and my string of bad migraines, we decided that we needed a serious break from everyday life. We packed up the LabMobile, including all of R's rehab devices, and we headed to the Crested Butte area of Colorado. We camped above 11,000', and we had many lakes around us for most of our days there.
It was exactly what we needed, and it also seemed to be what R needed to get stronger. We'd felt like his post-surgery improvement had slowed down a lot. Before the trip, he was still limping almost daily, and we were nervously controlling his activity to make sure that he didn't hurt himself. Ironically, our vet was encouraging us to increase his activity even more despite the limping because she thought that the limp was simply a "habit" rather than a sign of pain. I'm embarrassed to admit that we'd been afraid to actually follow her advice.
But, in Crested Butte, we had lakes galore. We let R play as if he'd never had elbow surgery. He was the happiest dog in the world. His limp vanished despite intense activity like this leap off the shore of a lake.
After the first day of letting him play around the lakes with no restrictions, I held my breath, watching to see if his gait got worse. It didn't!!!! So we played more!
In between multiple swimming (and diving) sessions per day, R went on progressively longer trail runs with the Runner. He still didn't limp!
I was doing his intensive rehab with him every day in our campsite, and he seemed to be getting stronger at an incredible rate. I'm going to share an update on his rehab soon.
By the end of our trip, we humans felt sure that we'd made a good decision when we chose CUE surgery for him back on April 15. We hadn't seen him walk with no limp in a couple of years before this trip.
His sister was thrilled to have him playing with her again.
I'll tell you more about our trip in future posts but I had to share this very happy highlight first!
This post is part of the Positive Pet Training Blog Hop because R's rehab from CUE surgery would not be possible without positive training. I honestly can say that "corrections" would do NO good in helping him learn his exercises. The biggest correction he gets is that I say "oops" when a paw falls off his blue squishy disk. That reminds him to "fix it" by putting that paw back on the disk.
We are now in Week 11 after R's CUE surgery (canine unicompartmental surgery). We feel that R's gait is quite variable. One day, he'll look "perfect" - as if he has no pain - and then the next day, he'll limp obviously. We try not to have our outlook vary with his limp! We just keep at the rehabilitation, helping him get stronger.
We were buoyed by our vet's opinion that he's doing better than any of the other CUE surgery patients she's seen before. She says that he's stronger and in less pain than the other patients at the same time in the recovery.
We still have a long way to go before he'll be living his normal life, which usually involves at least 30 minutes of trail running and one longish hike per day with some off-leash time to play with his sister. However, we can see that he'll be able to do those things in the foreseeable future, which is a great feeling!
Today I'm sharing a video of some of his rehab. He's turned into a Circus Dog with all the crazy tricks he's had to learn to do his rehab. You can watch it here or at Youtube.
You might remember that part of why I'm doing this chronicle of R's recovery is that I could find nothing on the web about dog owners' experiences after CUE surgery. I hope that my chronicle will help another dog owner someday!
It's been almost 11 weeks since R's elbow surgery ("CUE" surgery), and we're feeling thankful for how far he's come. I'll be sharing a full update soon of his gait and exercises. However, for today, I wanted to do something different.
Until his surgery, I had been teaching nosework to both R and Shyla. Then, R had to drop out to protect his elbow. He has done almost no nosework since early April, which is sad because he really loves it!
I thought that you might enjoy seeing a video of R and Shyla doing nosework yesterday. R was limited to the easier and low-height searches (no jumping for him yet). However it was super fun to see how FAST he remembered the game!!!
In the video, I was doing the searches with Shyla "blind" - meaning that the Runner hid them and I didn't know where they were. Normally, I hide them and then let the dogs search for them. It was my first time doing "blind" searches, and it was fun to see how obvious it was when Shyla found the scent!
I hope that you enjoy the video here or at Youtube.
If you have an underconfident dog like Shyla - notice how completely confident she is during nosework. She doesn't lean on me to help her. Instead, she confidently searches and succeeds! I think nosework is a great game for fearful dogs. Indeed, one of you (who shall remain nameless) suggested that I try nosework with Shyla. Thank you!
Our black dog keeps improving, now more than 7 weeks after his CUE surgery. He still has a noticeable limp but every other sign is looking great. Moreover, he walks really fast and enthusiastically compared to just a few weeks ago.
It is astounding to me how much of my day seems to be spent either doing R's exercises with him, walking with him, stretching his elbow, or icing his elbow. I feel as if there aren't enough hours in the day! I need a rest day :)
Here's a video to show his gait and his exercises for Week 7. His exercises have become far more challenging. He still targets with each paw while standing on a squishy disk but now he must alternate paws so that he learns to catch his balance quickly with his left front leg. He also does "push-ups", although they are now with only one front leg (I hold the other one up). He also crawls forward and backward, walks backward, and plays tug. Obviously, the vet is now focusing on rebuilding the strength and coordination in that his left forelimb.
Here's a video to show you the "state of affairs". One thing that you cannot tell from the gait part of the video is how much faster he's walking. He's speeding up by the day. You can watch the video here or at Youtube.
One unexpected twist has been that Shyla seems to lose confidence when I spend a lot of time training R during his rehab. So, I've been making sure to spend plenty of time training and playing with her. She's a lucky dog to get to play in meadows full of flowers.
But she and I are excited for the day that R joins us too!
That's the goal - and that's why I've been running myself ragged trying to keep up with all his rehab!
Yesterday, on the 7 week anniversary of R's CUE surgery, he went to our vet for physical therapy. Our vet likes to call herself a "rain cloud" because she tends to talk about all the "not so good" aspects of a dog's condition. She's a great vet - so we don't mind this habit one bit.
With that background, you can imagine how happy we were to hear her say that R was doing fabulously! He now has a greater range of motion in his elbow than ever before in his life. He was born with elbow dysplasia so his flexibility was inhibited right from the start.
Our vet gave us a new set of exercises to do this week with R, including things like a one-armed push-up on his "bad forelimb", playing tug, and crawling forward and backwards under a chair. Obviously, he's reached a whole new level where we are working hard to bring back the strength around his surgical elbow.
I will soon have a video of his gait and his exercises. The only slightly worrisome thing is that he still has a rather obvious limp but our vet feels confident that it will go away as he learns to trust that limb again.
R's favorite rehab instruction is that he must chew a bone while holding it between his paws for 10-15 minutes per day. This helps strengthen the small muscles around his elbow. Until a few days ago, he figured out ways to chew the bone without touching it with his left paw (that's his surgical limb). As you can see, he finally started using his left paw a few days ago! Another great sign!
He's thinking to himself, "this is waaaay better than one-armed push-ups!".
As a celebration of his great checkup, we walked him up to our "sunset lookout point". He's supposed to do four 20 minute leash walks per day now. Our celebration walk pushed the limit a tiny bit (26 minutes - don't tell our vet). We won't do it again but it sure was nice to have a pack sunset hike for the first time in 7 weeks.
The sunset was incredible!
The brilliant orange clouds spread all across the horizon so I couldn't get them all in one camera frame.
As the bright orange started to fade, the rest of the sky was filled with pastel colors. As we watched the sky, a hermit thrush started singing its mournful and beautiful song. Hermit thrushes are my favorite birds due to their song. They'll sing from now until around the middle of July.
For R, next week will be 8 weeks post-CUE surgery, and he'll have elbow x-rays taken to check that the implants (new weight bearing surfaces) are looking good. If they are, he'll be allowed to start running just a little bit. The first day will be 5 minutes... but it will be a happy day!
Today's post will be devoted to an update on R's recovery from CUE surgery on April 15. I'll tell you about our desert trip in future posts.
To remind you, this surgery was to put artificial weight-bearing surfaces into R's elbow that has congenital dysplasia. R's recovery has not been a straight line from point A to point B. As you'll see in the video, he became quite reluctant to walk very much in Week 4. His gait was slow, and he didn't look happy. It was a hard phase for us because we were scared that something had gone wrong. We still insisted that he walk the 5X per day prescribed by our vet but we let him walk as slowly as he wanted to.
Thankfully, he started to bounce back around Week 5, with his gait looking smoother and perkier. By the time we arrived home from our trip at about the 6 week mark post-surgery, we discovered that he was naturally walking twice as fast as in Week 3. Walking the length of our driveway used to take 10 minutes and now it takes 5 minutes!
For rehab, R (and us) spent Weeks 3-5 taking 5 walks per day, each about 10 minutes in length. Now, he's allowed to do 4 leash walks of 15 minutes each on the fairly smooth trails near our house. Progress! And, he's thrilled to go on his walks. We have to hold him back so he doesn't break into a trot. That makes me smile!!!
Throughout our desert trip and now at home, rehab exercises are a big part of our day. He does 3-5 bouts per day of strengthening and range of motion exercises. His elbow range of motion has doubled since Week 3!
For both strengthening and range of motion, you'll see in the video that he does a lot of targeting of a pointer held higher than his shoulder with each paw. It's actually a harder exercise when he raises his normal leg (R) because his surgical elbow has to support his whole weight. We're working on it, as you'll see in the video.
He also does exercises on a squishy disk that forces the small muscles around his recovering elbow to stabilize it. Exercises on the disk are definitely his favorite ones even though they are difficult. Throughout every session, he continually puts his paws on the disk, asking if it's time for those exercises yet!
The vet says that his elbow is already less swollen than it was before surgery just due to the dysplasia. Things are looking good! You can watch our update video either here or at Youtube.
He has one more rehab "exercise". He needs to hold something with his front paws to aid in rebuilding the muscles around his left elbow. We're finding that he's reluctant to use his left paw in this way. He even refused to chew an antler! Finally, we found a bone that he's starting to hold a bit with his left paw. Aside from having to hold the bone, this is his favorite part of his rehab!
The acute recovery phase is now on the fast track, I think. I hope that he'll be out running in our mountains with Shyla before the end of the summer!
R finally had the stitches taken out of his elbow. That means that he doesn't need to wear a cone or a tee-shirt anymore. That's worthy of celebration!
He still has lots of rehab and healing to do. When he's standing around, he's not weighting his "surgical leg" very much yet. Fortunately, we have a way to quantify how much weight he's putting on each of his front legs... and it seems like a great way to monitor how his leg feels. According to the vet, R should be able to go running for short distances in four weeks if the healing goes as fast as expected.
Nurse Shyla is on duty, helping R to heal by snuggling with him.
They are such a sweet pair.
I know that Shyla won't be completely happy until R can run and play again. She's showing her sad face in the next photo.
