Dirtkids

So our 7 yr old pup Bodie, had her second knee surgery yesterday. Her left knee was repaired 2 yrs ago, completely torn cruciate ligament and torn meniscus. This time the cruciate in her right knee was completely torn but meniscus fine. The next couple months will see us (her and I) working on rehab much like any of us would come back from a knee injury/repair. Granted I’ve somehow managed to avoid knee surgery all these years (knock on wood) but I’ve spent enough time recovering from knee injuries that I’m familiar with what needs to happen to get Bodie back to 100%.

Interestingly, the physical therapy sheet handed out by the surgeon is underwhelming. The slightly pessimistic handout claims that dogs never really get better than about 80-90% of where they used to be. That many have a permanent limp, soreness after exercise, etc. I was surprised to read this and happy that Bodie seemingly defied the odds after the first surgery with a total return to normal (at least as far we could tell.) Within 3+ months, she was back to “normal” in terms of activity, although, admittedly I still cringe when she gets hyper and I see her spinning in circles to play.

I nearly shed a tear last night at the sight of McKinley crawling onto the same dog bed with Bodie (although she almost sat on the recovering knee!), the concern of last night was replaced however with a battle for food today…dogs will be dogs.

So it’s been barely 24hrs since the second surgery and Bodie is already walking with some weight on the knee repaired yesterday…I’m astounded. I’m struck by the resilence of animals…especially dogs. Although she occasionally lets out a whimper (which I can promptly address with some pain meds), she paws at me, reaches for a toy and wags her tail…

If only we could all be so brave, so tough, so cool…dogs rock!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 27th, 2010 at 12:57 am and is filed under dogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.