Left Knee - Days 4 - 9

Day 8 : Sunday October 29^th , 2006









Rob and I were out of the house most of the day yesterday and part of the day today because we were celebrating our anniversary. While we were out today, Murphy decided to lick his stitches. He didn’t lick the scabs off, but he has caused the areas around a few parts to turn red.

Rob tried to touch his leg to see if anything was oozing and when he did Murphy growled at him. Growling is something that is totally out of character for him. Rob figures that Murphy may have done it because he moved is hand to quick for comfort. He must’ve thought that it was going to hurt.

Murphy has only ever growled at one of us once before, and it was over a pork chop bone that we took away from him. We have a strange way of punishing him whenever he displays bad-dog behavior like growling or digging. Normally he’d get sent to his kennel, and I’d put blankets over it so that he can’t see out. Since we are using his kennel as his bed right now, turning off the lights and closing the door was the punishment that he got for growling last night.

It’s a bizarre punishment that I made up by accident one day when he was a puppy. My favorite summer sandals were the ONE and only thing that he chewed up as a puppy. Looking back, I can’t really blame it all on him. He was a very young puppy and everyone in the house thought that someone was watching him, but he was able to find a quite spot right next to my sandals. I was so mad at him because they were the most comfortable shoes I owned that I couldn’t stand to look at him. I sent him to his kennel and I covered it with a blanket. He loves to be in the center of whatever is going on and since I caught him in the act, he learned his lesson. He’s never chewed on anything except his toys since. I also did the same punishment after dug a hole in the middle of the flower beds. It was the third day after moving into our new house, and the flower beds that had just been redone. We’ve never had a problem with him digging any holes again either.

We figure that he is a little mad at us because we haven’t spent as much time with him over the past few days. I’ll be spending all day Monday with him because I have an Exam to study for.

Day 6 : Friday October 27^th , 2006

Rob gave Murphy back his puppy couch Thursday night. He enjoyed sprawling out on it over night. He keeps trying to step over the back of it, which he was able to do near the end of his healing on the last leg. I swear sometimes he forgets that he has had surgery.

Day 5 : Thursday October 26^th, 2006

I took Murphy out early this morning. He does some pretty funny stuff when he first walks outside in the mornings. It is like he has to wait to get his muscles warmed up. He does all he can to hold his left foot up while walking down his ramp. This morning when we first got out into the courtyard, he did this kind of bunny hop with both back legs.

He spent most of the day alone today, so we relied on his funny blue hat to ensure that he wouldn’t lick his stitches. His Elizabethan collar isn’t the normal hard plastic kind, it is able to bend which gives him more comfort when sleeping. However, today he figured out a way around it and he cleaned the areas around his stitches. The same areas I had been trying to clean with a wash cloth the first few days. Now that he has it gotten the area all spotless, we can see that bruising it pretty much all gone, and his leg is healing just fine.

Day 4 : Wednesday October 25^th , 2006

Something strange we noticed the first three days after surgery was that Murphy has a strange sort of twitch in his right leg (which is now his good leg). I guess that it doesn’t really qualify as a twitch or even a spasm because it was rhythmic. It was more like a shiver that repeated itself over and over, like the hiccups. The strange thing was ONLY his right leg would do it. He wasn’t cold and no other parts of his body would move when he did it. It didn’t interfere with his mobility, and didn’t cause any pain so we decided not to call the Dr.

We stopped his pain medication due a tiny amount of blood in his stool. He had the same thing happen with the first surgery. Something new is once we stopped the medication, his crazy movement in his right leg subsided, so we think it may have been a side effect.