Thank you so much for the responses and sharing your stories/experiences. He was confined for the entire 8 weeks in a very small pen in my house and he had tiny xpens outside for when he needed to go out to go potty. I have 2 other small dogs so it was the only solution to not have them interact and play and run around together. I was told no playing, no running, no jumping, no stairs for 8 weeks and he didn't do any of that. He does not walk well (and never has liked being on a leash).....prefers to be carried unlike my other two that want to be on the ground, going going going all of the time. I was not told to walk him each day just to be sure that he didn't have a lot of activity and to keep him confined. If he wasn't in the small pens then he was with me....on my lap or in my arms. It got to a point that if I didn't take him with me and I left the house he would panic himself and salivate like crazy and his little heart would be going a mile a minute when I returned.....so he was pretty much with me all of the time. They had me move his leg and stretch it in and out a few times a day for about 20 times each time. This he tolerated most of the time but didn't enjoy it.
He did not get pins in his leg.....the surgeon did it all with special internal stitches. Once he got into the surgery the surgeon noticed he also had a torn cruciate ligament so that needed to be repaired as well. He had the cone for the first 2 weeks until the stitches came out then he had reprieve from that and that was huge. Poor guy. Felt so bad for him to endure all of this.
I spoke with my vet today and she said to watch him over the next week or two and if he isn't using his knee joint more then I will need to go to more extreme physical therapy.....she mentioned that these little dogs get used to not using the joint and then have little muscle mass left and prefer to do the skip hop instead of bending the joint......one solution is to put something on the good leg so that he cannot use it and is forced to use the leg that is recovering. Guuuuuhhhhhh.....sounds awful to me. I hope over the next week or two he will use the joint more. He is putting weight on the recovering leg when he is walking slowly and the joint remains straight. It's just when he picks up any speed at all that he hop skips it just a bit off of the ground.
Thank you all again for your replies and I will watch the video that you shared and hope for the best. I will try to take him on short walks each day and hope he will be forced to get it back to the motion necessary for his knee to function properly. |