25 days post TPLO

This past week was Kahlua's first week to get to come hang out in the living room while I was doing some baking. At one point she was up doing a little walking around chasing her 'Busy Buddy' around with some snacks in it. I limited that though because I wasn't sure how much she should be up walking around. The right leg is doing great recovering, but the left leg is really showing how much it's struggling. You can definitely tell how excited she was with this next picture!

Here is the latest on the right leg. It's looking awesome!!!! We've also been able to get her weight down a little. We've still got about 10-15 pounds to take off though.

Here is Miss Sexy Saidie. She was entertained yesterday by the fish and thought I'd snap a pic of her and add her to the blog!

19 days post TPLO

We're heading into week 3 after TPLO surgery. Things are going well so far and the hardest thing really is just keeping her calm and preventing her from moving around too much. Here are some photo updates
Peeking over the chair to say hello!!
Her hair is growing back pretty quickly!!

6 days after surgery

Kahlua has been doing great with her recovery. She absolutely hated the plastic collar so we ordered a 'cozy collar' on Petco's website. I bought a Large, but it was way too small.

Here is a pic of her Cozy Collar

These are the yummy applesauce pops Kahlua gets to have! I also have been filling a second tray with plain yogurt for yogurt freezies. YUMM!Here is an update of the knee as of 5.6.10. The red is bruising. The pinched area is where the staples are. She's doing amazingly well. We use the big sling to help support most of her weight when we take her out, but she keeps wanting to put weight on the leg.

Kahlua also got her FIRST LETTER in the mail last week! Her buddy Cato sent her a treat card to nibble on while healing from surgery!! She was VERY excited (as you can see from her sad face pictures)..

Day 1 post TPLO

This morning we were able to go pick up Kahlua. They showed us the X-ray of what they did and then also showed us an x-ray of her hips and said she has 'beautiful' hips! They went over the do's and don't, but really I think we already most everything just from all the research we did beforehand. They brought her out with an XL sling very similar to what my co-worker gave me.. only bigger. She did great walking out into the hall and then when she saw us she decided that was where she needed to lay as flat on the ground as possible! The vet techs gave her kisses goodbye and 3 of them lifted her into the back of my car.

Above is the leg. They shaved the right leg and you can see a little white patch where there is a bandage. Tonight we are suposed to remove the bandage. Her front paw is missing some fur from the IV they had in her.

Remember that potty box we made her?? Well we went to take her out today for the first shot at using the box. Rather than using it to potty she decided it would make a fabulous bed and layed down in it and would NOT get up. She had a great time smelling and eating the grass. Defeated we learned how to pull her weight up and help her off the porch and onto the grass.. what a defeat! The blue thing under her is the new sling that was part of the overall bill I'm sure!

I've been giving her applesauce pops that I made up for her. We'll try solid food later tonight before we give her the meds they gave us.

All in all things are going GREAT for her first day. I honestly didn't know what to expect, but I'm feeling good about things. We have her confined to a small area of a side room with a fan on her and one of us is almost always in the room with her.

Surgery Day

Kahlua had her surgery this morning. The orthopedic surgeon called me around noon and left a message that everything went fine with the surgery and we could pick her up tomorrow morning around 10am. He would like to go over the Do's and Dont's with us. Wants us to take any medications or anything we give her in so he can see what she'll be taking. I called back because I'm nervous and had to hear for myself that she's doing ok and they said she's fine and that we'd get pain meds tomorrow when we leave. I'm so so so glad everything went well and now I think the hardest part is going to be helping her recover from this surgery. I felt terrible for her this morning when we were going about our normal routines getting ready and her just looking at us like "umm.. hey.. guys.. you have forgotten to FEED ME.." Poor thing! I made frozen applesauce treats to give her if she isn't feeling up to eating and I'm also going to make some yogurt pops for her. A co-worker gave me a sling to borrow from when their dog had surgery and Kevin told me that he was told we'd be getting one from the vet also.. I'll take all the slings I can to help lift our 150 pound dog! She was on a diet this last month and ended up gaining 10 pounds because of her inactivity. Really made me realize how active we really do keep her! Here is one last pic before we took her in this morning!

Pre-surgery weekend

This weekend we've been doing some things around the house to get ready for Kahlua's surgery. We needed to make an area to confine her, make a sling to help pull her up from the floor, and then make a potty box to have on the patio for her. Firs up is the sling. I found a really cute sling online, but wanted to try to save some money and see if I could make something myself. I took some of my extra fleece and bought some vynal straps and sewed up this lovely little contraption. These next few pics are of the area we sectioned off to keep Kahlua. Her crate is too small to keep her in after a surgery and we wouldn't EVER be able to help get her out of the crate so we went with blocking off an area of the room we've already been keeping her. We put a painters tarp down to help keep the carpet clean. It was something that was recommended on the 'orthodog' blog on Yahoo. I've been reading the dogs get sick and make messes the first few days so this should help keep the cleanup to a minimum.. I hope..