Recovery from Cruciate Ligament Tear Going Great!

We originally posted this a few months back, and will leave the post intact, but want to update you!  This is one of the posts that didn't transfer very nicely when we used an application to transfer this blog from Wordpress to Blogger. 

Before you read the following, please know that it has been almost a year since Aspen tore the cruciate ligaments in her legs.  Though she is not allowed to jump up and down any longer, and can't do so, she has adjusted to her bed on the floor.  We hold her when we can, and she can walk around on her own.  If she were a LARGE dog, it may be a different story, but she is small and doesn't have has much weight to carry around.  Aspen will be 14 next month, and we treasure each day that she is with us. 

Now, below is the content of the original post:

We find ourselves writing on Aspen's behalf more as she gets to be an elder dog. Not that she doesn't still have lots of energy when she is in the mood, but she tends to sleep more now.

We told you about her cruciate ligament tear injury first here and then gave an update when she tore the ligament in the other leg.

Ten weeks have gone by at least since this all started, and she is walking around pretty normally. We downloaded the Recovery Guide, it's free, and signed up to get weekly emails to remind us what steps we should be taking to keep Aspen recovering well.

She definitely isn't the same dog she was, always jumping up on things and such, but she has this past week - against our better judgment sometimes, stood on her hind legs against the side of a chair, chased a squirrel a short distance, and is walking all the way around the back of the house and back, so very much better than she used to be.

We give her pain medicine prescribed by the Vet less frequently, but still about once a day, skipping an occasional day just to get a true picture of how much discomfort she is in. We also purchased a Glucosamine/Chondroitin product suggested by the same people that put together the Cruciate Guide. All of this seems to be helping.

We are never going to allow her to jump again, in fact she can't even if she wants to try. She can barely do a step still. But she is also a small, lightweight dog, so that should be taken into consideration when reading her progress.