Señor 4-Paws (Jackson)

From 2009-10

Jackson swimming in place

For his fourth hydrotherapy session, they attached Jack to a tether to make him swim in place longer, teasing with a tennis ball. His hind right leg muscles are now only 4cm smaller than the left side, an improvement of 3cm in only five weeks.

Sadly, the shop is going out of business so this will be our last session here. Want to buy a dog grooming & hydrotherapy store in west London?

From 2009-07

Jackson goes for a swim & rides the bus

On Jackson’s 3rd visit to hydrotherapy, he got to do his favorite sport: swimming!

From 2009-06

It’s amazing how focused he gets on swimming to get the ball.

From 2009-06

And how satisfied he looks when he gets it.

From 2009-06

We don’t have a car, so we have to take the bus. Jack had never been on a bus before, but he took to it like a natural. Now it’s one of our favorite things to do.

From 2009-06

From 2009-06

Jack gets flying lessons & jacuzzi

Jackson’s 2nd hydrotherapy treatment. After 20 minutes on the underwater treadmill, he gets hoisted into a jacuzzi tub.

From 2009-06

Wheeee!

From 2009-06

Another hard day at the spa.

From 2009-06

Jackson walking on water (hydrotherapy)

This was the first of Jackson’s ten hydrotherapy sessions. The TPLO surgery left his leg with a 7cm difference in muscle size from the other. We need to make it stronger.

From 2009-06

Between sessions we’ll be walking him up and down stairs, and training him to do squats (repetitions of sitting to standing).

We can rebuild him. We have the technology.

Chair for sale (dog wants to go, too)

I was trying to take a picture of this chair for sale, but Shaggy kept getting in the way. Looking for a new home?

From 2009-06

Jackson’s 2nd TPLO – hind right leg this time

Jackson’s hind right leg had been troublesome for a while. He’d go running around one day and then start limping on it for a week or so. We switched to only leash-walking, but every couple of months it would happen again. Then in mid-March, something was different – the limp was more pronounced and it didn’t get better. The X-rays confirmed that his cruciate ligament was almost completely ripped, that nothing was keeping his knee from slipping out of place anymore. It was time for surgery.

A few years ago he had successful TPLO surgery on his hind left leg. Several new treatments have been developed since then, but from the research I did TPLO still seems to be the most permanent solution to the problem, and the ones that surgeons have the most experience with. So we found a surgeon with excellent recommendations and made the first appointment we could get.

It’s a neat operation. See the main problem is that the knee joint doesn’t meet at a 90-degree angle, so there’s pressure on the cruciate ligament to prevent the bones from slipping out of place. One way to fix it is to take some other ligaments and thread them around to keep things in place, but big dogs like Jack can rip through those too. TPLO takes an engineering approach to the problem: they cut one of the bones, rotate it, and screw it back together with titanium so that the joint meets at an exact 90-degree angle; there’s no longer any pressure on the cruciate ligament and thus no more slippage. Problem solved and it won’t come back again.

The first thing we did was to set up a small kennel in the corner of the living room, just like I did the last time, to prevent Jack from moving around. He has only enough room to go into his crate, onto his new orthopedic bed, and to drink some water.

From 2009-03

He came home with a bright pink cast, howling and whining in pain. After a couple of days the whining stopped, but he still got frustrated because he’s a high-energy dog and he wants to move around. We give him plenty of rawhides and frozen treats to keep him occupied.

From 2009-03

Buying all the treats got expensive so I started making my own.

  Mitch’s Frozen Dog Treat recipe
  1) Dissolve a beef or chicken stock cube in water to make a broth.
  2) Boil some rice in the broth. (I usually make 1/2 or 1 cup batch at a time.)
  3) Let the rice cool, then stir in some dog food or other small crunchy treats.
  4) Stuff a Kong or a bone with the mixture, then put it in the freezer.
  Note: depending on how messy your dog is, you may want to put a towel down to prevent rugs from getting stained from the broth (and drool).

Jack normally takes 10-15 minutes to get through a rawhide (he’s a real power chewer), but the frozen treats last for nearly an hour.

After a couple of days Jack quieted down and settled into his new routine. The doctor said that we should start him walking on the leg as soon as possible. It’s a change from his last TPLO when he was given complete bed rest and absolutely no walking for two weeks. But I think it’s working well. He’s already up to 10-minute walks and getting stronger each day, and it’s only been 2 weeks. The last time it took a lot longer to get him to use the injured leg again. When we reach 8 weeks we’ll start him on Hydrotherapy (swimming, underwater treadmill) to build up the and make it equally as strong as the left leg.

From 2009-03

I thought the rehabilitation process was going to be a lot more difficult, but he’s adjusted very well, much better than before. He’ll be running around again soon.

Monday, 2 Feb 2009: The Day that London Stood Still (a.k.a. Snow Day!)

The biggest snowstorm in London in 18 years. The buses and trains were at a standstill. About 6 million people were unable to go to work, including myself and Marta. The lost productivity was estimated at just over £4 billion pounds.

But it sure was pretty, and the kids had fun!

From 2009-02

We trudged our way through streets like this to the tube station, foolishly trying to get to work.

From 2009-02

We waited for a half hour, but there was only 1 train and it was packed. And the announcers were warning people not to go in because they couldn’t guarantee that the trains would be running later on to bring them back home. So we gave up and headed home. Just then I saw a black dog walking around with no owner. I grabbed his collar — he had no tag. So Marta took off her belt to make a leash and we walked him to the vet’s office a few blocks away. But they said that they couldn’t take him in and asked us to take him to the police instead. We went back to the train station and gave him to the officers there. He was a cute dog, a black lab mix like Jackson about 2 or 3 years old. We were worried sick that he’d end up at the pound, but thankfully we got a call from the police later that afternoon to say that the owner picked him up.

We celebrated by taking our own dogs out to play in the snow in the backyard. The yard started off as a perfectly smooth puffy white blanket.

From 2009-02

Then we let Jack out to play fetch.

From 2009-02

From 2009-02

Shaggy liked the snow, too.

From 2009-02

From 2009-02

“Can I come in now? I’m cold!”

From 2009-02

The smooth blanket of snow was no more.

From 2009-02

And this is what is looked like at the park.

From 2009-01

Jack – it’s not a tumor!

In January, Marta discovered an olive-sized lump on Jack’s neck. It seemed to be growing fast, and he also lost a lot of weight in the kennel when we were on vacation, so naturally we thought the worst. I quickly had it removed and biopsied. Jack was left with a nice scar.

The results came in a week later — nothing dangerous, just another fatty growth. Whew! After three weeks of fussing with a cone around his head, he’s good as new.

Since Jack had a hard time laying down with the cone around his head, Shaggy helped out by keeping Jack’s big bed warm.

Jack’s midnight run

Now that I’ve finished the Sicily posts, it’s time to catch up on other news from the past few months…

It was a late night in August and I was tired, so Marta said she’d take the dogs out for their evening walk. But Jack had other plans. He saw a cat and he bolted after it, nearly taking Marta’s arm along for the ride. We found his leash trapped under a car up the block, but no Jack… he managed to rip his collar clean off, which meant that he had no identification tags. It was dark out, and with Jack’s black coat he’d be near impossible to see.

One of our neighbors was parking her car and graciously offered to drive around and try to find him. About 3 blocks away she saw something cross the street. It was Jack, messing around in someone’s front porch. But he was limping… he somehow sliced open the pad of his front right paw. I think he stepped on some glass. The vet said it wasn’t deep enough to require stitches, just keep it clean and wash it with saltwater to prevent infection.

We bought him a boot so that it wouldn’t get dirty when we took him for walks. Here’s a picture, look at the bottom left to see it, laced up like a boxer’s glove so that it wouldn’t fall off. (Shaggy also had to jump in the picture, of course!)

It took 2 weeks before the pad was healed enough for Jack to stop limping, and now it’s all better. I bought him a harness and a flashing LED light pendant, so that if he ever gets loose again his collar will stay on and he will be visible. Now when I take him out at night, he looks like he’s going to a rave. Disco dog!