[OwnedByJezebel]

Your recovery instruction may be slightly different from mine. If so, just follow what your vet wants. For your reference, our instructions for recovery were to restrict as such:

Week 1 and 2: confined to crate (I used an x-pen large enough for her bed, water bowl, and pee pad) and allowed only short walks on leash in order to go to the bathroom.

At the end of week 2, she went for suture removal and was then cleared for walking on leash 2-3 times per day for therapy -- but still confined otherwise. The first week (which was the third week of recovery), the time allowed was 5 minutes/session. Each week, we added 5 minutes to each session until we reached 25 minutes per session. So 5 minutes (3 times per day) in week three, 10 minutes (3 times per day) in week 4, 15 minutes (3 times per day) in week 4, etc.

It's good that you will be able to be home during the first four weeks. You're going to be feeling your way as to how to deal with the challenges of confining your recovering dog and keeping them quiet!

When they first get home, it won't be so hard, because they'll be on pain meds and really won't feel like doing anything anyway. They are going to have trouble just squatting to go to the bathroom, etc. After the first two weeks when they really start to feeling better is when the challenge begins!

I admit that I was a "nervous Nellie" for the first two weeks; I was afraid that I would do something careless that would mess up the surgery and cause it to have to be done over again -- like turn my back while she was unleashed and allow her to jump on the furniture or something. So I did my best to leave nothing to chance.

You need to think about the things that "trigger" your dog. With Jezebel, it's knocks on the front door and the ringing of the doorbell (and even the sound of one ringing on TV). At that time, she would react to birds, but only when she was outside. Now she reacts to them when she sees them through the window, too. I put a sign on the front door saying no knocks or doorbell ringing because there was a patient mending from surgery. It worked remarkably well -- UPS even left a case of wine without knocking to ask for a signature. And, of course, she was only allowed outside for potty breaks on leash, so no chasing birds. If I had to do this again today, now that she reacts to birds that she sees through the window, I would have to keep the blinds down so that she couldn't see outside and "go all terrier on us" in the x-pen.

She sleeps with us in the bed as close to me as she can get and I was worried that I might roll over on the leg, so I kept her in the x-pen in the family room and slept there next to it on the sofa for a while.

Anytime she could not have my full attention, like during cooking, cleaning, etc., she was in the x-pen -- no matter how much she hated it -- for her own safety.

They do get stir-crazy so I tried to find ways to let her out and still be safe. When I could give her proper attention, for instance while sitting at the computer or sitting watching TV, I let her out of the x-pen and used a tether to be certain (like I said, leaving nothing to chance) that she couldn't run away or jump. At the computer, I would put her bed next to me on the floor and attach one end to her harness and the other to my ankle. If I had to walk away for a bit, I would move the tether from my ankle to the leg of a chair so that she was still restrained. If she was in my lap, the tether went around my wrist. When she would sit next to me while I was watching TV, she was tethered to my wrist. I just couldn't take the risk that something would trigger her and she would jump off before I could grab her. When she started to sleep in our bed again, we tethered her there, too. So she was restrained -- one way or another -- for 8 weeks.

It's not always difficult to restrain them the whole time; they do sleep a lot and those walks 2-3 times a day starting in week three really do help them not only physically but also mentally.

At the end of the 8 weeks she was cleared for full activity ... running, jumping, you name it.