"That's what we like to see," Hank's surgeon said, and tapped the screen where the cut through his shin bone used to show as a clean dark line. On the new X-ray the line was mostly gone, filled in with soft, fuzzy gray. Eight weeks earlier she'd made that cut and rotated the bone. Now it was knitting itself back together around the plate.
We drove back down to Blaine on Monday, March 2, for Hank's eight-week recheck. It was 18 degrees and sunny, the snowbanks along Highway 65 gone gray and crusty, and Hank walked up Caleb's ramp into the Outback like a dog who knew this was a big day. He did not know. He thought it might be rehab, which in his mind means warm water and treats.
The appointment
This visit was much simpler than surgery day. A tech weighed him (70.6 pounds, down from 72 at his heaviest), watched him walk up and down the hallway on a leash, and took him back for films. He needed a little sedation so they could position the leg, so we waited in the lobby, which I now know very well, for about an hour.
Then the surgeon came out and walked us through the pictures. In plain words: the bone is healing the way she wants, the plate and screws are right where she put them, and the knee feels stable. She was pleased with how much muscle he'd held onto in the left thigh and gave the rehab practice a lot of the credit. She felt the right knee too, the way she did at the consult in January, and said it feels normal. She also said again that dogs who tear one cruciate ligament often have trouble with the other one down the road, and that keeping him lean and building up slowly gives that knee its best chance. I wrote that on the back of my hand in the parking lot.
The bill was $310. It's eligible under Hank's policy, and since we met this year's deductible in January, we should get $279 back. I submitted it before we left the lot.
The new list of allowed activities
We came home with a printed sheet. Until his next check-in with the surgeon, a phone call planned for mid-May, it looks like this:
- Leash walks, starting at 5 minutes twice a day and adding a few minutes each week if he's comfortable, working up to 30 minutes or more.
- Flat, even ground for now. Sidewalks and plowed streets, not snowy trails or the river bank.
- The pen can go, but he still needs to be confined to one room when nobody is watching him.
- Still no stairs, no jumping on or off furniture, and the ramp for the car.
- No off-leash time at all, including our own fenced yard. No fetch, no wrestling, no dog parks.
- The rehab home exercises, slow sit-to-stands and all, every day.
Every surgeon has their own timeline, and this sheet is for Hank's knee and nobody else's. If there's a dog recovering at your house, the sheet from your own surgeon is the one that belongs on the fridge.
The first walk
Tuesday morning before work, we did the first one. Five minutes, timed on my phone. Out the front door, past our neighbors' house to the corner and back. The sidewalk was dry down the middle and slushy at the edges, and the big maple out front had a fringe of icicles on its lowest branches.
Hank walked like a dog carrying a full glass of water. Slow, very serious, ears forward. At the corner he stopped and sniffed one patch of snowbank for what felt like a full minute, catching up on eight weeks of news. Then we turned around, and he grumbled the whole way home about the length of the route. Five minutes is not a walk, in his opinion. It's a tease.
His last rehab session was Wednesday, the sixth of six. I had to work, so Caleb took a vacation day to drive him and finally got to see the underwater treadmill in person. He came home and described it to me for twenty minutes, as if I hadn't been there five times.
Next week is seven minutes. Hank has already been informed.
