ACL Surgery Recovery Week 9

9 weeks have past which means we are on the last week of recovery! When we went in for surgery I was positive the next ten weeks would crawl. Boy was I wrong, I feel like they flew!

We have slowly started lifting restrictions with Lola. We got groomed this past weekend and have allowed her access to the stairs again. At first she acted like she no longer could go up and down, then only did it when we weren't watching, and now seems to go up and down with us. We are still keeping an eye on her to make sure she isn't over doing anything and I'm still sitting on the floor with her.

In Graham news, he has found a new toy to try and destroy. So far this one is holding up!

Graham the Destroyer

I'm not sure what's gotten into Graham lately. Maybe he's having a rough week. For some reason he decided to zero in on a toy and destroy it! Graham has a thing about trying to break squeakers in the dog toys. At first we just thought he was trying to destroy the squeaker but for some reason he zeroed in on his birthday cake toy and he was not going to let that one go.

We purchased Graham the birthday cake toy when we were in Galena, IL for our "not our honeymoon" honeymoon. Our trip was over his birthday so we thought we would bring him back a present. He loved it! It was the right size to fit in his mouth so he could easily carry it around. I think we had a few weeks where it even came to bed with us at night. Sometimes he would forget about the toy and then get all excited when he found it again. For some reason a couple weeks, he not only found it, but he had to destroy it! He was so obsessed with this toy that if we took it away and placed it somewhere he would cry until we gave it back! Josh put it on the table in the other room and he spent at least an hour circling the table crying! After he broke the squeaker we figured the obsession with the cake would be done but we were wrong! He just kept chewing and digging at the toy. At one point we did have it hidden but he had the reaction from his shots at the vet so I gave it back to make him feel better. That was a BAD idea. The toy made it to bed with us the next night and would not make it through the night.

We hadn't even fallen asleep for the night and the toy was done for. A hole had been chewed it in it and the squeaker was pulled out. Luckily most of the stuffing stayed inside! Josh quickly took it away and I hide it in my nightstand. I have a trash next to the bed but I knew if I put it in there he would see it from the bed and spend the night trying to get the trash can. He wasn't happy with us for taking it away! Well, Graham is smarter then your average bear. He knew the birthday cake was somewhere. My drawer to my nightstand  hadn't closed and he saw a small glimpse in it. I think Graham literally cried himself to sleep that night. He spent the night on my pillow crying. For the rest of the week anytime he was in the bed he wouldn't let his eyes off that night stand, even after I shut the drawer! During the day he pace around the nightstand crying. I'm not sure if he just finally gave up on the toy or decided to move on because a week later we had a new obsession.

At some point in time we acquired a purple squeaky dog. I think it came in a pack with a green and a orange one that are buried in the dog toy bin. I had pulled the purple dog out along with other toys when the birthday cake toy obsession started. I thought maybe I could distract him with other toys. Well it worked, but to late. After Graham gave up on the busted birthday cake he moved onto the purple dog. He zeroed in on his target, brought it to bed, and I awoke to piles of fluff littering our bed. Purple dog had died.

Not sure what got into Graham but after destroying the purple dog he has calmed back down. I think it something to do with his squeaker obsession. Both toys where destroyed and squeakers were removed. I think we grabbed the birthday cake squeaker away before any damage could be done but the purple dog squeaker got pretty chewed up. I even got Graham playing and throwing around a piece of the purple dog squeaker the next night while watching TV. 

On a sad note, it's sad that Graham has to destroy toys and I'm upset that he destroyed the birthday cake. Even Lola enjoyed the birthday cake toy. On a positive note, We have more then enough toys for the dogs so getting rid of two toys was probably something that needed to be done.

ACL Surgery Recovery Week 8

Everything is doing great! We've already climbed the toughest pat of the hill but there are still little rocks that we are climbing over. One of those little pebbles is the increasing use of her back leg.

I had started to believe that she wouldn't use her back leg when in softer situations, such as climbing around on the bed. I was shocked to roll over one morning and watch her walk along using both back feet. She even climbed over me using both her back legs.

It's the little things that make me happy with this recovery. Our next step is our grooming appointment on Saturday. I know everything will do fine but I can't shake the vet saying "one wrong move and everything you paid for, you'll have to do again". EEECK!!! I've noticed her sliding around on our small amount of hard wood floor and I decided that was a bigger risk then the groomer would be. I love were we take our dogs for grooming and I know they will treat her perfectly. Trying my best to have no worries.

ACL Surgery Recovery Week 7

Recovery time is nearly over! The vet said on Saturday that in a couple weeks we could start lifting the restrictions on Lola. I know she's doing loads better and has already showed us that she can go up and down stairs and jump off the couch, but I'm still nervous!

Our vet visit, if you didn't read, went well on Saturday. Then it was followed by a weekend of coughing. The meds they put Lola on on Sunday seem to be doing the trick and the coughing has gone away. Although the cough is gone I'm going to follow all the way through with the meds they gave her since we are unsure of the cause of the cough.

In other news, a couple weeks of recovery time left means a few more weeks until a trip to the groomer! I'm pumped to get them in and get them trimmed up.

Our Vet Filled Weekend!!!

So I last left you off yesterday morning. I sat downstairs wrote my blog, got together a grocery list, drank my coffee, had the dogs sleeping around me, and Josh was still in bed.  Graham had has reaction to his shots the day before but was doing fine and Lola seemed to be doing a bit better since her coughing episodes. Josh came downstairs and I pointed out how well Lola seemed to be doing and I mentioned that if the coughing kept up today I would for sure be bringing her in on Monday to get looked at again. Although the Robitussin seemed to be helping I wasn't sure if it would help her like it helps you and I. Well, I must of jinxed things when I brought this up to Josh.

Lola woke up and.....cough. A minute or so later and another cough. I picked her up and did my best to calm her down but her one cough quickly turned into a couple coughs. I knew where this was going and lucky us Lola had decided to wait for office hours at our vet. So I gave them a call and they had the vet call me back.  At this point Lola's coughs had already had her irritated to the point of making herself sick again. Thank god I got to talk to our normal vet and not have to reexplain the situation. He was baffled on why she was still coughing! He said her lungs and stomach all checked out fine the day before and her temp was fine so he felt no rush in seeing her. He brought up the Robitussin and I said I had already tried that in the morning and he said to give Benadryl a shot.

I would like to say Lola normally likes the taste of her Baby Benadryl but after having Robitussin down her mouth she wasn't such a fan of getting more meds. I managed to get her to take some and luckily didn't get another pink beard. After a bit she calmed down, the coughing went away, and she cuddled up for a good ol Benadryl nap. After keeping on eye on her for a bit we felt fine with leaving her home alone and getting some groceries. I also sent a text to my manager letting her know I may or may not be running Lola to the vet the next day but I would keep her updated. I still wasn't feeling good about this cough.

We left and got our groceries and came home. We tend to the leave the dogs in their crates while we put things away and then take them outside. While we put things away we heard it.......cough.............cough.........cough. We let the dogs out to see if Lola could calm herself down but, I think we knew what the outcome was going to be. The only thing different was Lola seemed to still have a bit of her peppy attitude and was playing around a bit but still coughing pretty frequently. So, we called the vet office again not seeing the point in waiting for her to make herself sick again. Although the vet isn't in, the office is open noon to 5 on Sundays and since it was 3:30 we decided to call before it got to late. So we call and they call the vet who calls me back. He tells me he has called a prescription in for Lola and for us to pick it up. It's a pill to help with coughing. He still felt confident in not needing to see her again and said to give the pills a shot and if things don't clear up in a few days he would like to see her again.

We grabbed the pills, had some supper, and came home and gave Lola her pill. She took the pill and soon after had crashed for the night. I'm not sure if the pill made her tired or if it helped halt the coughing allowing her to get some good sleep. I think we had a couple coughs last night as we fell asleep but no coughing fits. As far as I know we have had no coughing at all today. I'm not sure why Lola seems to feel the need to be such a medical mystery all the time but I'm glad that she is once again feeling better.

Our Vet Filled Saturday!

So I already posted about our Saturday vet trip that started at 10am. Little did we know it would turn into a vet kind of day! To do a quick recap, our vet appointment was at 10. Graham had some shots and ending up throwing up a little while at the vet. Lola was there for her post surgery check up and passed with flying colors.

We got home and since Graham was moping around we decided to order pizza so we could stay home and keep an eye on him. After eating Josh played his video game, Graham slept on the couch, and Lola and I took a quick nap on the floor. I woke up to one of Josh's friends coming over and Graham puking a little bit again. We hung out with Josh's friend for a bit, Josh was planning to go to the store with him, but suddenly it turned into a bit of a circus at our house! We'll start with Graham.

Graham started to just get weird after our nap. He seemed to keep trying to itch his head on things and bury it under blankets. He kept shaking his head and at first we thought something was bugging him but he kept doing it. He also would go into Lola's crate, spazz out a bit, then go to his and bury his head in his blankets and curl up. Even when he was rubbing his back on the floor he seemed to do an extra little twitch move to get a good head itch. We noticed the skin you can see around his eye had gotten BRIGHT red. So Josh got Graham to sit on his lap and I started to see if something was bugging his face. I checked his ears and both where BRIGHT red and where really warm when you touched them. At one point I held Graham and he was just dead weight when you held him. So because of Graham being weird and what Lola was doing, which we will get to next, Josh stayed home so we could figure things out. We decided the best thing to do was call the vet for Graham. We called the office and lucky for us, the vet called the office right after us so we simply had to be put on hold. He was pretty sure it was just a reaction to one of his shots and recommended Benadryl and giving it an hour to kick in. So that we did.

While all this is going on, Lola decided she hated the cardigan I was wearing and had put on the floor and puked all over it and the blanket we were laying on. At first we thought nothing of it and cleaned it up. She then developed this odd cough. It was just a cough then she laid there then another cough and then nothing then a cough and so on. So while dealing with Graham, Lola is coughing. Somewhere along the time of calling the vet and giving Graham some meds her cough turned into 3 or 4 coughs and then her getting sick and it wasn't stopping. We had puke on all areas of our floor, on my clothes, and on my leg. YUCK! So after trying all our tricks to calm her down and noticing this isn't her normal cough thing she does when she gets to excited or drinks water to fast we called the vet back. The lady in the office called the vet and called us back and said she may just be over stressed from the vet visit today but he would gladly come in and look  at her. We thought it over for a mere second and decided since both dogs where having issues we just bring them both in. It is now 3:30ish.

So we run our dogs into the vet for the second time for the day! Of course, Lola stops hacking and puking when we get in the car. When we get there he looks Graham over and decides to give him a steroid shot and they noted in his records that he would need that prior to shots in the future because of his reaction. He then looked Lola over. Temp was fine, nothing seemed painful to her when he poked around, and of course she quite doing. We laughed about her being a medical mystery and never wanting to show the vet what was bothering her. We also laughed because she was acting up when nothing had happened to her at the vet that day. He went ahead and gave her a shot to try and prevent her from getting sick anymore and said no more food for her for the night. We thanked the vet for coming in and we went back home. Josh sat on the floor playing his video game and Lola curled up by him and took a another nap and I curled up with Graham on the couch and we took a nap as well.

We woke up around 7. Lola suddenly started her coughing again! It was the same as before. One cough with a pause that quickly turned into a few coughs with a little puke. So we called the vet again, just wanting her to stop coughing. It was a different vet on-call for the night so we explained what had happened. He explained it could be her trachea but I explained that her cough for that was a totally different cough then this and that my tricks to calm those coughs down weren't working. He said we could bring her in if we wanted to or we could try giving her cough medicine and see how she did for the night. We opted for the cough medicine idea and to keep an eye on her since we didn't want to pay the after-hours fee and risk her being fine when we showed up again. The vet also explained that the vomiting may be due to her coughing to much and irritating her throat, just like humans. I had started to wonder if that was happening when the coughing started a second time.

The cough medicine seems to be working ok. She woke me up with two small cough attacks over night but nothing lead to getting sick and she was able to stop it herself and cuddle back up and get some sleep. The vet on the phone said we could give her the cough syrup two times a day so I went ahead and gave her some this morning and then sat her in the bathroom with me when I took a bath thinking the steam always made my throat feel better. Not really sure what our next move is from here but if the coughing doesn't stop soon I think another vet visit is in our future.

Lola wanted a pink beard instead of medicine in her mouth.

Our Trip to the Vet

Today was our first time taking both dogs to the vet at the same time. Graham was due for his yearly check up and loads of shots and Lola was there for a post surgery check up. Graham was up first and, like normal, took his shots like a champ. Then it was Lola's turn. We got a good laugh Graham kept standing on his back feet to try and see what they where doing to Lola on the table. The vet commented and got a chuckle about the interesting dynamic between our dogs.

I told him about Lola's progress so far. I mentioned there was still a slight limp but over all things where better. He was feeling her leg and taking a look at it and looked up at us and simply said "beautiful!". She is healing perfectly :). He said we may notice the limp when it's cool and damp weather like we have been having. He also said the limping on the other occasions I brought up where still normal and she is still strengthening the leg and learning to use it again.

We explained to him the great lengths we go to keep her from doing things he said she can't do. He jokingly asked if we could just hang out in his lobby so we could talk to other pet parents on how to properly handle there dogs after surgery since we are following instructions and she's healing so well. He said after the 10 weeks up we can lift restrictions on her if we don't notice anything else wrong. He also said since we pushed this appointment back a week and she's looking amazing right now that he won't need to see her again. I feel like Lola flew this recovery with an A+ and five gold stars!

While hanging out and talking to him Graham threw up a little. The vet put him back on the table and took his temp and asked us to just keep an eye on him today because of all the shots. He said it may have been something as simple as nerves. So we go back to the lobby to pay and as I'm pulling out my card I look over to Graham taking the BIGGEST pooh I have EVER seen him take! Worked out in the end, I forgot to bring a stool sample with us!