Physical therapy, for a dog? Yes indeed, I didn't know there was such a thing either until a few weeks ago. Short background history, earlier this year Ren jumped off the couch and hurt her back hind leg. Her limping got progressively worse and she lost all muscle tone in her leg. The vet finally determined that when she landed on it wrong she actually cut off the blood supply to her hip and the top of her femur was dying. So on Halloween she went in for surgery, a Femoral Head Osteotomy. This is where they basically cut off the top of the femur so that it is not rubbing bone on bone and then over time the scar tissue forms a fake joint. Since she only weighs 9 lbs this is a better option than a hip replacement.
So after the staples came out she still was not bearing any weight on the leg which had lead to her starting physical therapy. Today is day 2. She started right before Thanksgiving. She has an entire day of physical therapy while I'm at work and when I pick her up they go over all this stuff to do with her and then I bring her back in a few weeks for a recheck. Her physical therapist is absolutely wonderful! She is so helpful and nice. For Ren, in order to get her to put weight on her back leg, we put a lil book bag on her that is weighted and that forces her to use all 4 legs to keep balance. This has worked so well!!! Her therapist I don't think had much optimism for it working since she refused to let the leg be touched or touch the floor at all! She is now walking on the leg and standing on it while standing still. She still pulls it up when she's running but at least 75% of the time when she's walking now she'll use it. I'm excited to see what her therapist has to say when I pick her up this afternoon. I think she will be quite surprised! She still has a lot of work to do to be able to use her leg to the best of it's new ability but I'm becoming more optimistic about it!
Oh the things we do for our animals... I absolutely hate dropping her off for PT, she starts shaking and it's just so sad and pathetic, I literally have to speedwalk out of there without looking back to hold back tears, she's just so sad looking. She grabs ahold of my hair with her paws and then looks back over the vet techs shoulder like one of those shelter commercial sad videos. Thankfully it's only 5 minutes down the street from where I work but I have to constrain myself from calling to check up on her throughout the day. Yes I'm that bad, but she's my lil baby and I worry about her nonstop. Here's a pic of our kids and our Christmas tree....
I mean, really, look at those cute faces, how could your heart not just melt with those looks.
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