Dog Cruciate Ligament Recovery- Month One. ?

Clover’s dog cruciate ligament recovery- month one. ?

Just looking at the above photo makes me want to cry. She looks so sad…she WAS so sad. She was in pain and probably didn’t understand what was happening to her, or why she wasn’t being taken on proper walks or playing with her friends… or why mummy was forcing a disgusting medicine in her mouth every day. (I say forcing, weirdly Clover quite enjoys medicine. I think she thinks it’s a treat.)

In a weird way, the recovery process was actually easier for me to deal with right at the start of our journey. Clover was diagnosed with Dog Cruciate Ligament Disease on the 6th November 2023 and for the week or so that followed she mainly slept. Her body was clearly using energy to heal, the medicine made her drowsy and she just didn’t really want to do anything, or cause any fuss. She was happy enough laying on her bed next to me whilst I worked.

After a week or so of rest, Clover was a bit more herself again. The medicine still made her drowsy but the anti-inflammatory aspect was clearly having an effect because suddenly she was up and about and moving round the house again. Obviously we couldn’t let her climb stairs or jump on furniture, so a lot of the house was fenced off and I constantly had to be on high alert and watching where she was and what she was doing. But truthfully I was just glad she was up and moving around again. Clover and I began the 5 minute lead walks together. We did them three times a day, morning, noon and night. The vet told me that I needed to walk at a pace which would be extremely slow, to the point where I would be almost stood still and urging Clover to walk to me and then taking a small step back. The vet told me that the walks would be more painful for me because of how slow we’d have to move. Especially, given that it was November and so it was effing freezing!

But, it was vital that Clover actually put weight on the bad leg and that she used it properly to walk. The more she used it, the more muscle would build and the more it would heal. (Which shows exactly how much I know about anything because I would have presumed that it would be bad for her to use it… guess that’s any future vet career for me out the window). So we walked for 5 minutes at a time together. In the cold, in the rain, in the fog. I let her stop, I let her sniff. I didn’t push her. She used the leg. Slowly at first, tentatively touching her paw down to the ground. She was limping, but she was using it. To my surprise, five minutes at a time seemed to be enough for Clover initially. We would come back from our walks and she would sleep again and wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to go out again for many hours.

With the pain that her cruciate ligament was causing her, and the limited exercise she was able to do, clearly Clover could not go to day care for the foreseeable future. Nor could she join the one hour group walks that she goes to most weeks. Thankfully, my employer was lovely and I was able to work from home a lot more whilst Clover was recovering, but I couldn’t work from home everyday, and this presented a problem. One of our day care ladies was our saving grace. She would pop in and take clover out for 5-10 minute walks at a time, and would stay with her for a while afterwards each time. We are, and will always be, grateful for the help that we had from her on the days where I had to go to the office.

But this is just another example of the type of unforeseen issues that can arise as a dog owner. If I’d have had to go to the office every day, if I didn’t have someone else to care for her… what then? I’d have been taking holiday days that I didn’t have or unpaid leave to care for her (which doesn’t bode well for the old mortgage instalments!). My point being, as it has been from the very start of this blog, to think before getting a dog. They are hard work, they are costly and they involve a great deal of time and commitment. They also change your priorities, your lifestyle and cause you issues you don’t even know exist until you are in the moment! If you are reading this and you don’t have a dog yet, but are considering it please do check out my posts ‘nobody told me how much dog ownership would change my life’ and ‘top tips before getting a dog’ and the all important ‘how much do dogs cost?’ before you make any decisions!

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Anyway, I digress. After a few weeks of 5 minute lead walks, Clover was getting better. Like quite obviously better. I was still carrying out the fun task of administering her medicine every day and the short walks were working, but it was becoming clear that they were not longer enough. Clover was getting bored and this is where it began to get really tricky. I couldn’t walk her more than I already was and I couldn’t encourage her to do zoomies or chase her round the house (yes, we do this super fun game of chase usually when there are no leg issues involved… I don’t have a choice in the matter and there is usually nothing I would rather do after a full day at work). So, instead I opted for brain stimulation games, which worked well initially.

I hid treats all round the house (downstairs only, cos you know, no stairs allowed for poorly leg), for her to find and we did lots of training to engage her brain and make her sleepy. Clover also has a couple of snuffle mats (because one simply wouldn’t suffice…) so, as well as hiding treats around the house, I also hid treats in those and let her find them. Clover loved it. She’d spend a good 20-30 minutes at a time sniffing out the treats (her nose isn’t her most useful feature… she’s certainly not a working dog, but we won’t tell her that!). She enjoyed it so much that she would pick the mat up after she had finished and drag it over to me in the next room and bark. There was no confusion about she wanted. So, I would top it up again and she would go again. She was happy, she was tired and her leg was improving but, despite the fact that the treats that I was hiding in the snuffle mat were low calorie, we had a new problem. Clover was getting fat.

Clover has always been a muscly, fit looking dog. But the lack of exercise and the influx of ‘hide the treat’ games both in her snuffle mats and hiding them round the house began to take their toll. There was only one thing for it, I decided after 3 weeks. Spend more money! I contacted a local dog hydrotherapy and asked to book Clover in. Not that straight forward, of course. I needed a form signed by the vets to say Clover was healthy enough to partake in hydrotherapy and for the vet to confirm her advice given to me and that cruciate ligament disease was reason for the hydrotherapy. Thankfully, the vet was brilliant and had signed off the form and returned it to the hydrotherapy in less than a week. Before we knew it, we were walking through the doors of our first hydrotherapy session…

If you missed any of my previous diary updates, you can find them at ‘the diary of my ruff reality.’

More information relating to the day that Clover was diagnosed with cruciate ligament disease can be found HERE.

Alternatively, head to ‘nobody warned me about…’ to read about the dog ownership topics that I wish someone had told me about before I got Clover.

Thinking of getting a dog? Visit my ‘top tips page’ for important things that I probably should have considered further before buying my floppy eared hound!

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