A few pictures of Easton's latest SplashDog session. I can see a difference in his dry land strength and stamina. Thanks to Michael for these nice images. Lighting wasn't the greatest, but they turned out fine.
Ready, set, SPLASH
It's hard to tell, but Easton is working very
hard here swimming against a strong current.
He's determined to take the ball from my hand.
This hard work leaves a very happy, but tired boy.
He has a good hard nap afterwards!
After several weeks of taking it easy, Easton gets to swim tomorrow at Splash Dog, here in Edmonds, WA. He continues to make good progress resting and healing his injured right leg. I can see some frustration lately as he grows stronger and more restless. I've encouraged a few rough-house sessions where he is on the floor, but he wants to escalate it to a full-blown zoomie or fetch game. Hold on Big Red, we'll get to that soon.
Easton continues to move a little better every day. We give him short controlled walks and no running or jumping. He has this adorable habit of following our every move, which means up and down four flights of stairs 20-30 times a day. Now its only 3 or 4 times a day. These very functional doggy gates are wonderful. I do have to look at "The Face" several times a day. Don't know if I'll ever be immune, but I must stick with the plan.
He does come up to the bedroom for a good nights sleep. Dreaming and howling at imaginary fireworks, peddlers and/or mastodons. Yes, I said HOWLING. It scares the crap out of me at 2AM. I get up and pet him to see if he's OK, but he just wags his tail and turns over to dream again. "Geez Dad, quit waking me up". Sorry bud, I thought the alarm went off!
As you can see, Lady is watching over Easton, even when he wants to GO. It's OK Big Red, I'm just going to the garage for a minute.....really!
The word came from our Vet late this week that "Easton needs surgery" to repair his right-rear ACL. We talked about the pros and cons of the different surgical options/techniques. The Vet clinic uses a visiting surgeon who has excellent results with (what I call) The fishing tackle technique. During Easton's most recent examination, our Vet encouraged us to research completely the subject of ACL injuries in dogs via the reams of information and opinions offered on the Internet. Here are a collection of interesting clinical descriptions and well thought out opinions on the subject.
First let me say; our Vet highly recommends the fishing tackle technique which the surgeon they use has had tremendous luck with over the many years they have been working together, servicing the needs of the clinic's patients. Our Vet has accumulated a massive amount of "trust capital" with us; caring for Cosmo, Devo, Lady and now Easton. We trust her implicitly. If and when Easton has surgery, her recommendation will be our course of action.
However, as I talked about in the previous post, Easton has been resting and only gets very focused and specific exercise (on-leash from the time he leaves the house, out the back avoiding stairs for shorter walks). This is to allow Easton a chance to heal and to get use to a more sedentary life, free of the impact and risks that originally injured him. We have two doggy gates on order to permanently block/control access to both sets of stairs. He just can't sprint up and down the stairs following our every move.
The good news is that he appears to have recovered to the point that he is not limping at all and walks exactly like he did the day we brought him home!! He likes to lead the way; and atypical of my normal dog walking disciplines, I let him! He has always occasionally scraped the tops of his right paw toenails as we walk. It is no better or no worse than on April 14th (our first walk together).
Bottom line: I don't want to put him under the knife unless his quality of life is severely threatened. We'll continue to watch him closely and will create an environment for him so that chances of further aggravation to his knee is as close to zero as humanly possible.
It's been over three weeks since Easton injured his right rear leg after being attacked by an off-leash dog. We were hoping that after a few sessions of swim therapy he could grow strong enough to heal, but that is not the case. A trip to the Vet last week brought a preliminary diagnoses of a torn/ruptured ACL. When our Vet first met and examined Easton a month ago, she thought there might be some minor soft tissue damage to his knee even though his range of motion was good and he was not limping. Since the day we got him, he has "drug" his right-rear paw, occasionally scraping the nails on the asphalt when we toddled around the neighborhood. It has become obvious to me that Easton has had a knee condition for some time now. The attack has made it worse, aggravating or even completing the tear of the soft tissue in his knee. We are expecting an opinion from the radiologist today or tomorrow.
Here is video from Easton's last session at Splash Dog Spa (it's really not fancy, just very well thought out). You'll see in the video, at times, Easton seems to swimming harder; because he is! Leigh Anne turns on the jets and Easton swims against a raging current. Let me tell you, it wears his baggy ass out! Plus, he gets a massage every 5 minutes or so. WOW. He just loves it. When I win the Lottery, we'll do it 5 times a week....ha, ha.
On the advice of our Vet, Easton has to go cold turkey!
NO toys
NO fetch
NO rough house - It's like we've done this all our lives. He is gentle, but tough!
NO dog park
NO more swimming for now - If he has surgery, he'll be swimming a lot for therapy.
Short, controlled walks
Less food (no weight gain allowed) - he is not overweight, but no chances taken!
....And, the toughest one - NO stairs (or at least minimum up-and-down). This one is just about killing him, because he needs to follow me EVERYWHERE. Both flights of stairs are blocked, but I let him come up to sleep with us at night.
When I know more about what the course of action is with Big Red, I'll let you all know. He is still a happy-go-lucky boy who doesn't seem to realize he could be seriously injured. I'm trying to teach him how to play laying on his back. He doesn't get it yet, but I see signs he is starting to relax and let it flow.
Hi everybody, Easton here. My Dad is making me chill out for few days. Last week I injured my right rear leg when an aggressive dog attacked me for no reason. I guess I was having too much fun. No bites or blood, just a leg twist when I wheeled around to put my big chompers on the attacker. All my toys are put away for now, because I always want to play and fetch. That is forbidden for awhile. Oh well, chow still shows up at the same time every day, so its not too bad! Dad said something about swimming in a warm pool - that sounds pretty good! I wonder if they serve doggy Mai Tais by the pool?
Our good friend Hamlet left for the bridge this morning. I know Lady will be waiting to show him around. There is not much to be said beyond the beautiful story Hamlet's family tells of his time with them.....Goodbye and God Speed to Hamlet
....Tee shirts are pretty cool. I like mine; it even says I'm a bleacher bum from Wrigley Field!! Wearing it today (thank dog it's only 68 degrees) in honor of your fashion trending Hamletness. Hope you are feeling spunky and want to go fetch the ball. Easton over and out.
By popular demand - looking at ingredients of grocery store brands.
The care and feeding of your best friend is a personal decision. It never hurts to be educated on the finer points of what you are really getting when you purchase that attractive bag of food with the slick picture of the cutest dog you've ever seen.
IMHO this is the finest overview of the options we have when it comes to feeding our dogs. Right up there with the work that Whole Dog Journal does. The presenter has impeccable credentials (she is a Vet) and is well spoken. You could easily watch this video 3 or 4 times.....really! This is Part-1 covering the best types of foods and their ingredients. Part 2 (I will post soon) is the horror story (my words) of supermarket brands. Do you want your dog to "just survive" or "thrive". That really is the question.
Hard to paint a picture with words about how TALL Easton is! Being a Golden, there is a certain "size" picture in most of our minds, painted by our dogs, Westminster beauties or encounters with this wonderful breed. Not sure where he inherited this, but he would be a #1 draft choice in the Golden NBA for sure.
It becomes comical when he decides to squeeze under my desk in order to help me attack all those bits and bytes during the workday.
I can now trust him to play off-leash out front, fetching up the ball and exploring. Once he just couldn't control his enthusiasm and headed in the wrong direction. A sharp NAME and recall snapped his head back and he quickly trotted back to me, tail wagging and refocused. This was after only having him here for two weeks. I think that eventually he will be 99 percenter. Easton is a very good boy, eager to please, but just a little out of practice. We are so thrilled to have Big Red in our family.
Two months ago to the day, Lady left us for the Bridge. I wish she could have met this big guy. They would have been so good together. As I've said before, Lady LOVED the big Golden boys, especially when they didn't care who was boss! When it comes to other dogs, Easton has immense tolerance for pretty much anything. A certain Cocker Spaniel insisted on trying to mount his shoulder, not really knowing why. Once, twice, three....then on the fourth try, Easton turned on him, put him down with a growl and a flash of very big teeth.....and that was it. Never happened again. They went on to spend an enjoyable afternoon together.
