Settling In

We are now 4 days post-op, and things are beginning to settle down for us. Hudson is still getting around pretty well, but he is also still getting 6 pain pills a day. Day 7 will be his first day without the medicine, so that will be the true test of how he is doing. 

This weekend our routine worked out pretty well. We would go to bed around 10 after Hudson got his last pills for the night, and then he would start whimpering around 6 when his next pill was due, so the fiancé would get up and give him medicine and take him out, before falling back asleep on the couch.

Hudson has 2 areas that he can be in while he is recovering. He obviously has his crate where he has been sleeping, and a larger pen that is about 5’ x 5’. Still not enough room to run around, but he can at least stretch out a bit more. He stays in his pen as long as one of us was around to make sure he wasn’t jumping up. If we were both out of the room, he would go to his smaller crate to lie down.

We only had one incident of jumping up, which was really my fault. Sometimes in the morning if we can tell Hudson is tired but won’t lie down we will put a blanket across the front of the pen so he isn’t as interested in the activity going on around him. It had been pretty effective at getting him to relax, but he got a little too excited to hear my voice and not see me, so he jumped up to see over the blanketed side of the pen. Needless to say, I panicked a bit. The last thing we need is for him to hurt his hip and have to go in for a repair.  Once I went over to see him and say good morning, he calmed right down. He isn’t walking with any more of a limp than he had been, so it seems that we escaped any injury. 

Our main issue at this point seems to be the cone he has to wear. Hudson is quite a chewer, and would love to lick at his incisions for a while, so he has to wear it at all times. We are really running into 2 issues with this. The first, and this is more of an issue for him, is that with the cone, he can’t really hold any nylabones to get a good chew. Since chewing is his main source of entertainment right now, he is pretty bored. He did get a nice frozen peanut butter Kong today. He managed to get all of the peanut butter out, so that seems to be the way to go until his cone comes off.

The second issue we are having with the cone is the smell. Hudson has a pretty thick beard, and with the cone on all the time, his beard never quite dries out. I guess we are going to have to start blow drying it or something. That should be interesting.

All in all, things are going pretty well, so I can’t complain. Most whimpering can be settled by getting into his pen with him for some cuddling. I know it’s only day 4, but I am counting down the weeks til this is all behind us.

If all goes as planned, we have about 10 days until his staples come out, then 2 more weeks til his other hip is done, then about 6 weeks of recovery.

We can’t wait.