It’s been four months since my French Bulldog had IVDD surgery for Grade 5 IVDD with no DPS and this is our recovery story.
Well, this month has been pretty difficult, to say the least.
We really felt like we were rounding a corner since Albus had started walking in the underwater treadmill correctly and even sometimes on his feet on the grass.
But while we are ecstatic that he is becoming more mobile, it poses its own set of problems. With him moving so much, he started developing sores on his feet since he does not completely flip them yet which results in some dragging.
We would come home and find him with blood on his paws and there’s just nothing more heartbreaking. It’s been difficult.
We have been doing everything we can think of to mitigate these issues–shoes, socks, epsom salt baths, etc.–but so far it’s just taking a long time for these to heal.
One of the bummers about this is that he can’t go into the underwater treadmill with the open sores so we’re feeling pretty down about this. We really enjoyed seeing his progress there!
Being that he uses upper body so much more now, he has also started to show a lot of soreness and fatigue in his shoulders. It was really concerning to see him with his shoulders shaking with muscle spasms.
You can see the way he is almost doing a handstand in the photo because sometimes he presses so hard on his front half that he literally lifts himself in the air. It’s crazy.
Even though we so badly want to see him continue to progress walking, we’ve just been encouraging him to relax a lot. He’s also on a new medication to help treat the muscle spasms which has been helping him a lot.
This isn’t much of a great update but we’re all hanging in there and hoping Albus’ sores heal up quickly so we can get back on the road to recovery.
One positive thing about this past month is that we celebrated Albus’ 4th birthday. A part of my heart breaks that he is so young and has to deal with this type of problem but another part of me is just so happy that he’s still alive and we’re doing all we can. In some ways, this birthday is a little more special after all we’ve been through together.
Thanks for following along and loving on our guy with us!
If you want to follow along, you can see more of Albus’ recovery from IVDD surgery on his instagram @albusandweasley.
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