He's doing really well, so well in fact that it is near impossible to stop him doing the things he shouldn't be doing. The poor boy is in major sulk mode most of the time & I'm left feeling awful for being so cruel - tough love definitely isn't my forte!
After my last post "Feeling Confused", Matt stopped into the vets to have a chat and find out where we should be at, at this stage of the recovery. As we thought, any jumping (including on or off the sofa or bed), walking up or down stairs and off lead walking are all still strictly off limits & remain so at least until his post op apointment.
In the house, moving around should be limited and supervised as much as possible. Walking across the room to see us, or from his crate to his water bowl are fine, even on laminte/lino flooring - but any more than that is a no-no. If he wants to get on the sofa, he must be lifted and then we have to keep a very close eye (and ideally a hand!) on him at all times to stop any jumping.
The problem is, he's now so speedy that it's not always easy to catch him! One minute he can be sat in his crate & less than 30 seconds later he's at my side. Before I've managed to get "Dizzy no!" out of my mouth, he's on the sofa & looking very confused at all the fuss. It's only happened a small handful of times but it's still a few times too many! It's also extremely easy to forget that he needs to be secured in his crate before we can leave the room & once last week, myself & Matt where stood talking in the kitchen & suddenly, there was Dizzy stood proudly in the doorway, wagging his tail! We'd both completely forgotten to shut the crate door before we left the room! Needless to say, that hasn't happened again and we both felt terrible about it!
It's also got to that time of year, where the birds are out in force collecting nesting materials from all the gardens in our area. Dizzy does not like this one bit! Any bird sat on "his" garden fence or worse, if they dare to set foot in his "kingdom" (as we call it) would normally send him skidding across the room to the garden door, "aroo roooing" at the top of his voice. I have to be very careful to catch him before he sets off launching himself off the sofa on his mission to rid the garden from those pesky birds. We have discovered a pillow fort constructed from sofa cushions, while not impenetrable, tells Dizzy quite clearly to stay where he is, meaning I can move around the room (keeping an eye on him) safe in the knowledge that he's not going to jump. Although I do get a whole lot of sighing grumbling & sad, sad eyes:
By now, on average, the vet excepts a dog to be able to handle around three on lead walks a day of about 20 minutes each, although that does vary depending on the individual dog. That's pretty much where we are with Dizzy - he has two walks of around 15/20 minutes each a day plus multiple short trips to the garden for toilet breaks (I cannot WAIT until I don't have to accompany him on those anymore!).
Out on walks, you'd be hard pushed to notice anything had happened to him, aside from the fact that his left leg is a lot skinnier than his right, which is normal & to be expected. He's desperate to run and will constantly attempt a funny hop-skip routine, due to the short lead, & then look around at me forlornly. Over the night few days, I'll start bumping up the walks to three instead of two, but he's coping really well & we're very happy with how he's getting on!
Another post will follow soon...promise!
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