Today is day 22 of Hank's strict rest. He has spent most of those days in a four-by-four exercise pen next to the sofa, going out on a short leash for potty breaks and doing a few gentle range-of-motion exercises his rehab therapist showed us on Monday. For a dog who considers squirrels a personal insult, that is a lot of nothing.
Boredom on crate rest isn't just annoying. A bored dog paces, chews, whines at 4 a.m., and eventually tries something dumb, like hopping up when you open the pen. So our job for these eight weeks is to tire out his brain while his leg does nothing. Here's what we used every day this month, and what ended up in the drawer.
Used every single day
Kong Classic, frozen. We already owned two large ones. I soak part of his daily kibble in warm water until it's mush, pack it into the Kong with a spoonful of plain canned pumpkin, and freeze it overnight. A frozen Kong takes him 25 to 35 minutes, lying down, which is exactly the position his surgeon wants him in. Owning two means one is always in the freezer.
LickiMat. The flat rubber mats with the grooved patterns. We have two. Spread something soft into the grooves (soaked kibble, a little plain yogurt, pumpkin), freeze it or don't, and he licks for 15 minutes. Licking seems to settle him faster than anything else we've tried. One caution: once the food's gone he'll start working on the edge, so the mat comes out of the pen when he's done.
A snuffle mat. A rubber base with fleece strips tied all over it, where you hide kibble and the dog noses it out. Hank's breakfast goes into the snuffle mat now instead of his bowl. Ten minutes of sniffing seems to tire him the way a half-hour walk used to. The lick mats and snuffle mat cost $46 together, and if I could keep only one thing on this list, it would be the snuffle mat.
The white noise machine. This normally lives in his basement den for fireworks and thunderstorms. Upstairs by the pen it covers the sounds that make him want to stand up: the mail truck, the neighbors' snowblower, Caleb's F-150 pulling in at 4 a.m. after a plow shift.
Helpful some days
Toy rotation. Three soft toys in the pen at a time, swapped every two days from a basket in the closet. A toy he hasn't seen since Christmas is briefly the most exciting object in Isanti County. Free, and it works better than it should.
Me, reading out loud. I'm not kidding. He settles when someone talks to him in a low, boring voice, and I have a stack of library books. He's heard most of a mystery novel by now. He doesn't know who did it either.
What sat in the drawer
- A treat ball that rolls and drops kibble as he pushes it. Fine in normal times. In a pen it bonks against the wire, and outside the pen it makes him chase, which is the opposite of the plan.
- A "long-lasting" chew from a Christmas gift bag. It lasted four minutes, and I didn't like the idea of him swallowing chunks while lying flat.
- A plastic puzzle board with sliding lids. He solved it in about ninety seconds and then tried to eat a lid.
The one thing that got chewed
The only casualty so far is a nylon leash. We'd been hanging his short potty leash on the pen so it was always handy, and one afternoon while I was in the shower, he hooked it through the wire and chewed the handle halfway off. My fault entirely. The leash now hangs on a hook by the kitchen doorway, out of reach, and the chewed one is still in service until it isn't.
Every dog's recovery runs on its own schedule, and the surgeon or rehab therapist is the person who knows which activities are safe at each stage. We asked before adding anything new to the pen, and twice the answer was "not yet."
Hank's take: the snuffle mat is acceptable, the pen is not, and the freezer should open more often.
