Day 3

So it was an eventful weekend - but not for Clover. My aunt scurried up from PA to breed her Havanese (the enchanting EllieMae, who I showed to her championship last year) to another handsome champion Havanese who is about an hour north of me. I had offered a long time ago to help her when the time came - and, I will admit, it would have been REALLY nice if they time hadn't come when my own dog was quite so post-op. But alas, such things happen, so I had my aunt and her two female dogs crash with me this weekend (my uncle and the male dogs crashed with my parents about 40 minutes north). This also included shuttling my aunt and her little girl around, assisting in the actual breeding, and providing a supply of Nature's Miracle and clean towels to her to clean up the pee spots from her other little girl dog. Anyway, we'll see in about a month if there are puppies on the way.

Clover has been a lot more with it in this post-op period. A bit odd, as it was the same doctor, same surgery, same medications, probably the same anesthetics... perhaps this time it's just not a novel experience. He was VERY happy to see my aunt and uncle, and the girls. Of course I had to keep them separated, as the knee repair is very fragile and will be for several weeks, but there was some quality tail-wagging through the ex-pen. There was also some growling when he was on the sofa with me and the puppy was trying to poke at him, but, that's reasonable.

He will lick at his stitches when he's bored (nothing a layer of vet wrap isn't fixing, at this point) and definitely sleeps a bit more than usual, but is otherwise happy and comfortable. He is mostly holding up his surgery leg, but even in the past day has start gingerly putting it down with a little bit when he stands. This is very good - many dogs won't bear ANY weight for weeks - they were impressed last time when he was doing so ten days out. Although you don't want to over stress the knee, some weight on it will enhance circulation and prevent excessive muscle loss, so it's good. Later there will be range of motion exercises (our favorite is repeated sit and stand to flex the joint and lightly weight bear), but for now, whatever he is comfortable with works for me.