Gus is 20 months old, mostly a Black Mouth Cur hound. He loves his walks and he loves to run with friends at the dog park. If the wound were to go untreated, he would soon develop almost crippling arthritis. We couldn't see letting this happen to such a young and active boy, so we opted for surgery.
Surgery is done, and now we're looking at eight to ten weeks of "strict confinement." Gus will wear a cone for a couple of weeks while his six inches of stitches heal, but even then he'll still be on radically limited mobility until the term is up. The letter of the instructions are that he is barely supposed to move at all, although of course this is difficult to enforce. There are no walks except short excursions into the yard to use the bathroom. He can briefly hop around on three legs inside the house, but even this is to be strongly discouraged.
The ideal is that he spend nearly all his time crated, but that just wont work for Gus. He's a rescue who reacts with terror and panic in the crate, frantically trying to dig his way out. (We suspect he was locked in a closet or something as a puppy.) The next-best option is for him just to sit on a dog bed near whatever humans are in the house. This works pretty well, as (because we live with my retired in-laws) there is always someone at home.
However, Gus is very closely bonded to me, which means he wants to be with me most of all when I'm at home. This is sweet, but it also means that I have to carry him up and down three flights of stairs between my third-floor office and his dinner. Under no circumstances is he allowed to attempt stairs on his own. He weighs 62 pounds, though, and my back is already starting to hurt.
We're nearing the end of the first week of all of this now. I'm wondering if anyone else has been through something similar, and if they have any tips. Should I feel shitty, for instance, when I look up and realize that Gus has walked ten or twenty feet without assistance?
Oh, and here he is pre-surgery:
Gus is a good boy.
