Drake Update

To all who have asked how Drake is doing, I'm sorry for the delay. The short answer is, he's doing really well, and we're crazy.

To expand on that a bit, after the first very crippled post-surgery weeks, maybe the first month, Drake started feeling better. He wanted to do the normal Drake things that he does with such passion, like…
chasing squirrels
wrestling with other dogs
jumping around
fetching the ball
playing tug of war
zipping back and forth quickly

The only problem with that list? He was specifically not supposed to do any of them. In fact, we were told, don't let Drake
chase squirrels
play with other dogs (even very small puppies)
jump (ever)
fetch
play tug of war
change direction quickly.

In short, we were told, keep Drake from doing 90+% of the things he loves most in life. Oh yes, Drake was also on a veeeery limited exercise regime. Week 3, for example, he could walk 5 minutes a day. Week 4, he could walk 10 minutes and swim 5 minutes. Week 5, walk 15 and swim 10, and so on.

Well, from about Week 5 through Week 8, he seemed to feel like he was back to normal. He wasn't, of course, and when he overdid it, he ended up limping, or sitting still in recovery. I lost track of how many times I had to carry him home because we went too far and he was in pain and didn't want to walk home. To be fair, the farthest I ever carried him was about a third of a mile, but that's plenty. He weighs about 70 pounds and, even though he loves to be carried, that doesn’t mean it is always easy. For example, in the middle of the longest carry, he suddenly felt really affectionate. This meant I was walking down hill, carrying him in my arms, while he nibbled on my nose and blocked out all vision directly in front of me.

He got very frustrated with being penned up. He started barking at us, a lot, and nipping at us some times. He started being more resistant than before. For example, because he wanted to jump so badly, he'd stop while I was walking him, until the leash and my arm was stretched out behind me. Then he'd run and jump forward, towards the front, snapping the leash straight and yanking my arm darn near out of its socket.

We were supposed to help him on and off the couch; he got good as slinking under our hands and jumping up on his own, and/or slowing down and looking away, so it seemed like he was heading somewhere else, then jumping onto the couch.

As he got more crazy, resistant, and barky, he tried harder to do things that they warned us might blow out the knee and make us start over with a new (and very expensive) surgery. This meant that all of our energy was spent protecting Drake, then snapping over to wanting to kill him. I screamed at Drake more often than I care to admit, and cried with frustration more than once. It seemed like from 6 something in the morning until 11 something PM, we were on Drake duty, and it was just too damn hard.

He is, however, better, and that's very good. At eight weeks they cleared us to up the exercise level, and, at nine weeks, to start doing brief jogs. By weeks 10-11, we were up to 75 -80 minutes walk a day, plus a swim (often), plus 5-7 minutes of running. Week 12, we started throwing the tennis ball again, and today, I let Drake play off leash with a dog friend for the first time in…jeez. Almost four months. He was crazy happy, and is a much better dog today. Which is good, because that means I don't have to kill him.

Greg