SarahWhen it hurts, keep moving through the pain; if you stop to wallow in it, its hard to get going again. Our Chesapeake Bay/Lab had the equivalent of an ACL repair for a human. I say he takes after me in so many ways, and Ceaser Milan would frown at me for humanizing my dogs. (Huge fan and we love his methods.) Colt’s very “in his head” shall I say. He somewhat hid the fact that he was injured from us initially. He was always very athletic, and nothing was done at half throttle. He must have shifted his weight to compensate for the injury long enough that his muscle atrophied, because I started to notice the muscle difference before he started to limp. The Vet confirmed he had torn the ligament and surgery it was.
He evidently decided that he could walk just fine on 3 legs and basically refused to put it down. We worked with him and took him swimming after the leg healed…. Still he walked on 3 legs. We took him back to the vet for a follow-up, and I was sure he’d done something to damage the surgery….No the vet said everything was still intact. He felt like we just had to convince him that he could use it. That’s right convince my dog to use his perfectly repaired leg. Yep, that’s right, convince the animal who loves me but can’t understand what I am trying to say. So, it was a process but in the end we did. God Bless YouTube and the Doggie Physical therapy videos! We used ankle weights and tried bandaging his good leg to encourage him to use the repaired one. Finally, little by little, he began to use it and regain the muscle he had lost.
Fast forward a few years, he’s now 9 years old and arthritis has set in, but he’s still done well until…. Two weeks ago, he must have gotten a cramp in that leg while sleeping or maybe even possibly kicked the leg of the bed during the night because he woke me up panting at 3 in the morning. I thought. He must have to go out, so I opened the door to take them out and suddenly I have a 3 legged dog again. Thinking he would get over it and realize it was only a temporary pain, I wasn’t too concerned, but this is my prodigy dog, remember? “It hurts so I better not even try”. Sadly to say, this has been so many of my thoughts. I don’t know if I was taught it or if I just absorbed it as a child, but I have never handled difficulty or pain or push back well. He just decides that he can walk fine on 3 legs, so he doesn’t try to use the 4th. I stuck an ankle weight on it, so he would at least extend it. I got some movement out of him. I made him walk and walk and walk until the other leg was tired and he had to shift the slightest amount of weight to the 4th leg. Slowly but surely, we are regaining his confidence in the repaired leg.
Things in life are just that way…. It hurts or there is push back and we just step down and back away from it. We don’t try because there is pain, and it’s easier to take the softer slower path. Well, that is why we have the mediocre life we have. Keep moving in a forward direction. Keep focus on what is ahead; Don’t stop to dwell on the hurtful thing that got said about you. You will spend valuable time, that could be pushing you to your dream or goal faster, wallowing in your self pity instead. You have got this, go for what you believe in and don’t stop using that part of yourself because you can manage without it. You can’t be your whole self without all of you.
