Sadie's Therapy

I'm sure you've all been wondering what's been going on with Sadie - how has she been recovering from her surgery that she had almost four months ago?

I haven't written much because there's not much to write about. We kept her pretty much without activity for three months post surgery aside from short walks up and down our street or around the block as she got a bit stronger. Otherwise she was contained from playing with other dogs, running and going up and down too many stairs.

After 3 months, we checked in with the physical therapy department who encouraged us to start doing a series of therapy exercises with her daily such as walking up and down stairs, doing figure eights between cones and having her walk over long rods so she lifts her paws. Still after six weeks, I didn't see huge progress on her dragging her paws. Now both the neurologist and the physical therapist said it could take months and that it's unlikely we'll see results this soon but I want to see progress! I want her to be able to go on long walks again and play with other dogs and enjoy being a puppy. But we've also spent a lot of time and money to help her get better. We're giving her every chance possible to have a normal and long life. So this past week, Sadie started doing water therapy. This is supposed to make a huge difference so two times per week, I will take Sadie to the therapist and she'll put on a life jacket, step into a tub that has a treadmill in it - the tub will fill with water and then the treadmill will switch on and this will help Sadie get used to lifting her feet up higher off the ground when walking.

It's funny because this type of therapy is also used for weight loss in dogs. In fact, they recommended just this for Adler to lose some weight when she was a few years old. We didn't do it then mainly becaue Adler would have freaked out for sure because she hated water. Sadie loves it so we knew at least it wouldn't be a struggle to get her into the tub. And she proved us right as she was drinking from the tub like it was a big water bowl! Fingers crossed this therapy does the trick!