Patton and his chew toy

Patton and his chew toy
Originally uploaded by sufras.

Sorry a few days has gone by since my last post. Been hard with the holidays and work. Hope everyone has had a wonderful Holiday season so far.

Patton continues to progress rapidly. As you can see from the picture there are no "marks" left from his surgery. The vets at VMTH did a great job. There are no scabs left so he no longer wears a E-collar at night or when we are gone. His hair continues to grow in rapidly(hard to tell from the picture, I know) We have also given him full reign over the downstairs. I am still not ready for him to tackle the stairs to go up with us at night, or head to the basement when the boys or I go down. I think it is better for him to stay in his kennel at night for now since the other hip will be done in January. I don't want to go through the him crying at night again when the time comes. We are still waiting to hear on the results of his PennHip test. His X-rays were sent to the University of Pennsylvania for final confirmation on his measurements.(Evidently, VMTH does this for all PennHip they do) Once they are back, we will most likely be scheduling the other hip.

Patton's energy level is completely where it was pre-surgery. We have stretched his walks to around the block and will be adding onto it as he is ready. We are met with stares and a few questions as to why he looks so funny. My little patchwork dog. Maybe I should tell people I really wanted a poodle? Anyway, he is all puppy still and wants to play with the rabbits in the yard, but we have to hold him back until he is completely healed. And he is having fun removing the decorations from our tree.

Each day he is putting more and more weight on the leg and we notice that his knee is more inline when he walks. He doesn't "bunny hop" when he walks like he did before the surgery either. All good signs.