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.

Pupdate on R - 3 weeks post-CUE surgery

When we were trying to decide about R's elbow surgery (CUE - "canine unicompartmental elbow"), I found that there was almost no information easily available on the web about the recovery from the surgery. Consequently, I thought I'd chronicle R's recovery both so that the Runner and I can more easily see his progress and for others who are considering CUE surgery.

It's been 3 weeks since he had the surgery on 4/15. For the first two weeks, he had a very stiff bandage that went from his shoulder down to his toes.

He was not allowed to be loose at all in the house. We kept him tethered or in a crate. Also, he couldn't be on slippery floors. We have hardwood floors so he wore dog boots with Vibram soles for walking indoors. He could go for very short potty walks, and he did not use his "bad" leg for walking. He hopped along on three legs. We kept a Ruffwear Webmaster harness on him all the time so we could help him using the handle between his shoulders.

At the 2 week mark, he got the bandage off, and some rehab could begin. He almost immediately started using his surgical leg albeit with a huge limp. He still cannot be loose in the house. He must constantly be tethered or in a crate.

At the 2 week mark, we started taking him for 5 walks of 5-10 minutes each per day. They had to be on smooth ground and very slow. R sure was happy to be outside a bit more!

We also started passive range of motion exercises, where we gently flexed and extended his elbow 10-20 times for 5 sessions per day. Last, we did some strengthening for his left leg by rocking his body gently toward his surgical leg so it bore more weight. After his walk/stretch/strengthening exercises, we iced his elbow. His range of motion improved hugely over the third week. However, his elbow still looks very swollen.

He's still on lots of meds - pain meds, sedatives, and nerve pain meds. He can't take anti-inflammatories because his liver enzymes have been elevated recently.

I am not sure how much his gait improved. That's part of why I recorded video of him walking. We can look back at it in future weeks to see how his gait is changing. Here's a short video about his progress and showing his gait. You can watch it here or at Youtube.

Today, he's spending the day with our vet having ultrasound, acupuncture, and other PT things done. We'll be given our rehab instructions for the coming week, hoping that he keeps improving!

Happy Friday!

R will get a "new elbow"!

R's elbow surgery is scheduled, and we've been given the green light to go ahead with it despite some other health issues with R.

As many of you know, finding a surgeon and scheduling the procedure has taken a long time (since early January) and lots of work. The reason is that R is having a relatively new surgery ("CUE") for late-stage congenital elbow dysplasia, and not many surgeons are experienced with it. After tons of searching, we finally found a great surgeon who was willing to fly here to lead R's surgery on 4/15.

We had a recent scare that we worried might delay the surgery. R's liver enzymes have been somewhat high and inching upward over the past few months. They continued to go up even after we cut his Rimadyl dose in half. Earlier this week, he had an abdominal ultrasound to make sure that his liver looked okay overall, and it did. We got the "green light" last evening to go forward with the surgery.

The hope is that his liver will return to normal when he doesn't need drugs to control his elbow pain. The surgery can be thought of as giving R a "new elbow" because he'll have artificial surfaces installed for weight-bearing within the elbow. He'll no longer have bones grinding against each other like he has now so we hope that his elbow pain will be greatly reduced or even eliminated.

It's a fairly long recovery so we let him run and have fun in the desert (within reason). He now has 2 weeks until the surgery... and then I hope it's smooth sailing during his recovery!

Thanks for all of the amazing support and offers of help while I was so frustrated by the process of getting his surgery scheduled. Now, I'm starting to feel nervous about the surgery, having cleared all the hurdles to schedule it. That's inevitable, I think!