Left Knee - Week 5

November 24, 2006

Murphy started a few more additional exercises on Monday. I was the first to implement his "Sit/Stands" with him on his morning walk. We tell him to sit, and then just as his hips are squaring up for his butt to touch the ground, we tell him to come. This exercise is designed to strengthen his muscles as well as make him shift his weight to his back legs. The first time I did it with him, it worked great! The "What the heck?" look on his face was priceless for me, but he didn't find it funny because that was the only squared sit I got. He proceeded to do his 'sloppy sit', leaning to one side, on all the next sit commands.

We also started his "Walk-Over" exercises on as well. These are also designed to make him shift more of his weight to his back legs. For this exercise we sit on the floor with our legs spread apart, and make him walk over both of our legs. The goal is for him to pick up each leg and walk over the obstacle in the way of his feet, no hopping is allowed. We made sure to get some rugs so that he wouldn't slip if he got tired or tripped. We think this is his favorite exercise because there are treats involved.

Rob is in the process of building Murphy a set of stairs for him to use to get up onto our bed. Since he has never actually learned to jump and uses his back legs to climb up onto things, we figured that the addition of a set of stairs to our bed is worth protecting our investment into his two new bionic knees.

It is strange to watch him at this point because he literally is at the same stage he was at with the first leg. He thinks he is healed. He is once again getting up off his bed to walk to the gate to greet Rob when he gets home, barking at any noise he feels we should be aware of, and he is getting more playful by the day.

He is scheduled to get his final x-rays on Thursday December 14th, one day earlier than anticipated.