Riley doesn't even need to dress up today for Halloween!  With all those staples in her leg, she can officially be "Bionic Franken-dog" for Halloween.  Hehe!  Is that bad?  Yes, that's bad...

A few months ago, Purina Pet Gear sent us some samples of their products to test out.  They sent some training pee pads and their stain and odor eliminator.  I thought we would have plenty of opportunities with "Old Pee Pot Chloe" living here but then she started taking something for urinary incontinence and stopped having accidents in the house and in her sleep.

Then came the great poop incident of October 28, 2011!  Let me just clear it up though--the dogs did not poop in the house--I stepped in poop with BOTH shoes while I took Riley outside to use the bathroom.  Greeeeat.  Of course, like any person who steps in poop outside, I didn't realize it and promptly tracked it inside.  Double greeeeat.  Enter the Purina Pet Gear Pet Stain & Odor Eliminator for carpet and upholstery that did an AWESOME job cleaning up our carpet and rug!



You can buy the Purina Pet Gear products at local Wal-Marts and K-Marts or on Amazon.com, Walmart.com, or Bed Bath and Beyond's website.

Riley is doing well.  We are on day 10 of crate rest and the time has really flown by so far, hooray!  She is "talking" in her crate right now, wanting out...I'll try to get a video of that soon.

Well, we are 8 days post-surgery and the native is getting restless.  She is obviously feeling a whole lot better because she's taken to sporadic bursts of barking and scratching on the crate door.  We have been doing the heat regimen of 15 minutes of a hot compress on her leg two or three times a day.  6 more days until her staples come out!


We got a nice surprise in the mail today--the toy Riley won over at Miss Barbara's blog that the OP Pack passed along to her came...that was SUPER fast!  They must have known Riley is getting cabin fever!  It's the cutest monkey toy you ever did see and she LOVES it!  She's trying to rip it apart at the moment and is having tons of fun with it.

Riley's leg looks remarkably well.  She must be feeling a lot better today because she's been a bit more whiny in her crate today than she has the last few days.  Also, when Grandma took her out earlier today, she reared up on her hind legs...oh my gosh...she's going to give me a heart attack before she's allowed to go back to normal activity!!

She's slept through the last 2 nights (thank Heavens!!).  I could use the sleep!

Well, here we are, four days after surgery.  Riley is doing very well.  She is putting weight on her leg and has a surprisingly good attitude about being penned up in her crate.  She is so much happier in her new, larger crate!

3 days of crate rest down, 53 more to go!  (Almost 4 days down).  Speaking of the crate...I discovered that Riley couldn't exactly stand all the way up in her crate--she's too dang tall!!  So I went out and got her the next size up, 42" long x 28" wide x 30" high.  She is SO MUCH more comfortable in this crate and is able to stretch out some.  In fact, she just tried hiding her chew toy in her bed.

2 days of crate rest down, only 54 more to go!  (I'm counting Tuesday as a day of crate rest since that was her surgery day).  Riley had a good night last night.  She had to keep repositioning herself to get more comfortable, but I can't really blame her!  I put a cold compress on her incision last night and she didn't really seem to mind that too much.  I am also supposed to massage her leg, so have been doing that as well.  I also got to stick myself halfway into her crate and snuggle with her for about 10 minutes and get kisses from her!  Thank goodness they didn't mess with her sweetness level while she was under the knife!

Scar pictures to follow, so if you don't like seeing staples in skin, skip on down to the bottom!

Riley came home at around 11:30 this morning.  Her leg looks good from what I've been able to see of it and she isn't too terribly swollen up.  She is starting to put a little bit of weight on that leg already (not consistently though)--go Riley!

I just got off the phone with Riley's surgeon, Dr. Dassler.  I talked to him for 10 minutes, so that was kinda nice.  Her surgery went well and she did well with the anesthesia and everything.  He said the normal angle in a dog's knee is between 28 and 32 degrees.  Hers was 37 degrees, so it was pretty steep.  That predisposes them to having CCL (Cranial Cruciate Ligament) tears.  He also said the angle is also pretty steep in the other knee (her left knee) and that she will most likely have a tear in that knee sometime in the next year or so.  Grrrrrrreat.  Gives us plenty to look forward to.

Her ligament ended up not being completely torn like they had thought, but was "hanging on for dear life" by about 2 filaments.  So practically torn.  So they still were able to do the TPLO (Tibial Plateau Leveling Osteotemy) surgery.  He said her meniscus (the sort of padding in the knee joint, I think) was not torn, so that's good.  He left the ligament and meniscus in and the ligament may go ahead and tear the rest of the way or may not, but the knee is fixed anyway, so it won't be a big deal--she just may limp around for a day or two when it does tear.

He is usually able to correct dog's knees to a 5 degree angle with this surgery and, because of her steep 37 degree angle, was able to correct Riley's to 11 degrees.  She should be good to go with the 11 degrees though and he said he's pleased with the result.

Riley is now the bionic doggie and has a stainless steel plate in her leg and 6 shiny new screws into her bone!  I imagine she must now look something like this: