cooper's luxating patellas

Poor Cooper, I hope he feels better soon! :flwr:

I had to help India to start drinking. I bought plain strained beef, lamb, or chicken baby food and mixed some into water, making a broth. She loved it! I fed her a small amount every few hours to get her hydrated.

I hope Cooper gets well soon - he and his brother look very sweet in the pics :flwr:

I know how you are feeling with this type of operation - Honey tore her cruciate ligament a few years ago and had to have it replaced. Its very stressful both before and after the operation but in Honeys case it was the right thing to do and I hope the same goes for Cooper.

We are careful now not to let the dogs jump up on the couches or into/out of the car incase they hurt their legs as this is how Honey tore her ligament. They are very good about this and wait to be lifted! (although the younger ones do still make a run an jump at the couch :lol: ).

Honey took her stitches out twice (the first time was within 5 minutes of bringing her home after the op :roll: ) so I would advise keeping a very close eye on him.

Honey now has athritis in that leg and can't walk for more than 5-10 mins which is really sad cause she loves her walks. We have to sneak the other 2 out in a covert operation so she won't get too upset, although she's too clever most of the times and realises whats going on!

Anyway, I hope Copper is feeling better and please update the thread to let us know how your are getting on.

PS. I have some pictures of Honeys knee post-op if anyone is interested but I will warn you they are a bit gruesome!

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for the encouraging words

Cooper is going very well at the moment. He whined a bit when we got him home thursday but he is a lot happier now.

The only thing we've had trouble with so far was making sure he keeps his fluids up. We have a plastic syringe type of thing that we used initially but today he seems to be drinking okay (probably because it's 41 degrees C).

We saw the vet today and they were very happy with his progress, he is coping well as he is trying to use the leg already.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone who has posted their thoughts and tips. We wil keep you up to date with his progress.

So glad to hear he's doing well! :flwr:

Am so glad that Cooper is at home, hope he starts to feel my doggy soon, give him a cuddle and kiss from me...

Hey everyone. Further updates:

Cooper is doing really well. Eating and drinking and standing on his leg well. He's feeling so good that he's starting to get very annoyed about being stuck in his pen, but as long as we're in the room he's ok. He spends the day at his grandparents - my parents (while we are at work - they have a little pen set up as well) and they are spoiling him rotten which he's loving.

Our only difficulty now is that when we carry him outside to the toilet he is very particular about where he does his business, so he sniffs and walks around on his leash - and I'm worried about him using the leg like that - although if you stand still with him on the leash he refuses to do anything - he held on so long the other day he was getting uncomfortable - any advice would be appreciated.

I think he knows outside is when he's out of his pen so he's trying to get as much out of it as he can!

His brother is a little jealous of the attention Cooper is getting but is being a very good boy about it. Although he seems to think that the food and water Cooper has in his pen must be better than his and is sticking his head in to try and eat and drink it!