Been a while since I updated the progress on our greyhound Hobbes and his leg injury (see here and here for earlier developments). After his procedure in January he spent a number of weeks getting driven to Pittsburgh weekly for follow-up visits, and then he was released to physical therapy here at home, and he’s been doing very well. You can still tell that he favors that leg on occasion, but he’s getting much stronger on it and he walks normally, maybe eighty percent of the time. That’s huge, since at the time nobody was totally confident that he’d be able to even keep the leg.
However, since they didn’t do the bone fusion operation like had been originally planned (for many reasons, most of which were along the “We think he can mostly heal on his own and then we can always do the fusion later if it doesn’t work, but so far he’s healing” line), the vet in Pittsburgh strongly advised an orthotic device for the injured leg, that he’ll use mainly in situations when we want to let him off-leash (like, going out on his own in the backyard to do his business, which he hasn’t done on his own since October). A couple weeks ago he went to Pittsburgh to get fitted for his brace (they make them to order), and yesterday, it came! Here’s how it looks:
Now comes the work of getting him used to that thing. He wore it briefly last night, and he did walk around on it a bit, though after a minute or two he was clearly annoyed by it. Another step on the road to recovery and normal life, though!
The brand is My Pet’s Brace, by the way.
