A note to Kojak Nation – if you’d like to receive an email notification when new blog posts are available, use the Contact page to send Kojak a note and we’ll add you to the list! One quick note: If you join the Kojak Nation email list, please keep an eye out for the confirmation email. If it lands in your spam or junk folder, please mark it as “Not Spam” so future Kojak updates can find their way to you.
Kojak is now 6 full weeks into Rottweiler TPLO recovery and the change in his leg use has been dramatic. He is still basically under house arrest (no toys, no stairs, no jumping on the couch, no running around loose and so on) and we’re looking forward to week 8 when he can start being a puppy again. If you missed last week’s recovery update you can read about it in Kojak’s Week 4 – Life With a Rottweiler after TPLO. If you missed reading what TPLO surgery is all about, you can read Kojak is Getting Ready for TPLO
Our biggest concern remained Kojak’s propensity for holding his surgical leg up off the floor while he was standing still. We didn’t know if it was hurting him or he had gotten himself into the habit of holding it off the floor or if something else was going on. As part of his therapy, we were supposed to stretch the surgical leg out then bend the knee fully and do several reps of this exercise several times a day. Kojak agreeably allowed us to do this a couple of times in a row (then he would pull his leg out of our hand) and didn’t appear to be in any discomfort. The problem though is he IS a Rottweiler after all – and Rottweilers are very stoic dogs. They don’t yelp or yip or really give any signal for “minor” pains so we didn’t know if he was really in any pain and was masking it or if he wasn’t feeling really anything (other than slight annoyance).
Our take home instructions from the surgeon said there would be a marked improvement in leg performance and utilization somewhere between weeks 4 and 6 so we decided to back off a little on the walks and just see how it went.
Somewhere between the swimming, walking, climbing into the truck his leg got markedly better. He now stands for longer periods of time using both back legs to hold his weight, however, he will still occasionally shift his weight off his surgical leg if he’s standing still for a longish period of time. There’s no problem with using the leg while he’s walking – he uses it just fine for pulling my arm off while walking or squatting in the yard. We’ve decided just to let him heal, having faith in our surgeon and our experience with the last two Rotties.
The really big news from this time is Kojak learning to swim! Everyone thinks dogs know how to swim innately – but there’s swimming (as in not drowning) and SWIMMING. Dogs know how to not drown if they fell in a pool but, especially with large breed dogs, there’s nothing graceful or enjoyable about this kind of swimming. If you take a look at week 4 for Kojak’s first swimming introduction you’ll notice he’s thrashing around with his front paws quite a bit and attempting to climb the side of the pool with kind of a look of panic in his eyes.
After a few sessions, while still not crazy about jumping in the water, Kojak will now go in the pool and swim around fairly comfortably. He’s gotten over thrashing with his front paws and has learned to keep his body level in the water (head near the waterline, tail up and near the surface and not reaching for the bottom with his back paws). Technically he doesn’t need the life vest but we were told (by our surgeon) that without some buoyancy in the rear dogs tend to just let their back paws float and use them only for steering. Since this is supposed to be therapy for his back legs, adding the vest causes him to use his back paws for paddling and swimming.
If you look at this video, you can clearly see him using both back paws to actually swim, not just navigate.
Now, when we ask Kojak if he wants to go swimming, he gets all excited and starts whining and running to the door to make sure he isn’t left behind. Of course swimming is exhausting work and does stress his leg a bit (as intended) so he’s a little wiped out afterwards. I usually buy him a chewy treat and he gnaws on that on the way home until he falls asleep.
A question from viewers of the Photo Gallery. Why do we have tables and chairs on our couch? This is an attempt to keep Kojak off the furniture while his leg heals. He isn’t supposed to be jumping up on the furniture for the 8 week period after surgery and this is our attempt to keep him from doing that while we’re not around. Obviously we are only partially successful.
