Sierra Gives J Linn Two Paws UP at SplashDog!

As I explained in an earlier post our sweet foster girl Sierra is post luxating patella surgery and she just was not really progressing like we would like. This is not because the surgery was botched or anything, it is merely that she has dealt with the pain of her luxating patella for a good part of her life, about a year and a half, and because of that she has walked on three legs very proficiently and has a lot of muscle in her good rear leg. So when she has pain in her left rear leg she naturally wants to avoid that so she just continues to do what she has always done and walk on three legs. We have been working on stretching her leg but we needed help. I had heard of swim therapy for dogs before so I set out to find someone who did this kind of work within driving distance from our home. I am so happy to have landed on SplashDog in Edmonds, WA.

Today Sierra had her very first session and it was awesome! I had tears in my eyes for much of the time. J Linn the therapist has wonderful dog skills. Sierra who can understandably be a bit shy took some time to feel comfortable with this new place. J Linn did not push her, perfect. Once we had the paperwork filled out and had talked a bit Sierra went and sat on the pillow next to J Linn. I wish I had a picture but we are still working on camera shyness and I didn't want to give Sierra anything else she had to worry about.

The next thing was for J Linn to introduce Sierra to the pool and again, she did this with the utmost reverence, peace and patience. Nothing was forced, nothing was hurried. Sierra was so cute in her arms listening to her soft words and slowly getting more and more wet. The pool temperature is set at the perfect temperature for dogs and everything about the experience was relaxing and calm.

Once Sierra was fully in the water J Linn did some gentle palpating to feel her muscles and Sierra was fine with this. Then it was time to swim. And boy did Sierra show us! She was like a little fish. She did a few laps and then to our excitement she really started to use both her back legs equally. She did so well!

Later on in the day we took the dogs out for a walk and to our surprise Sierra's leg hung straighter and her foot was so much closer to the ground. The best of all......she took 4 steps on the foot. We had not seen her do this while walking before. Yay Sierra! We signed her up for 5 more sessions and are hoping to get her on her way to using that leg so that she can go to her forever home and be out of pain for good.

SplashDog can be found here.

 

I want to thank Sierra for letting me film her. She was not as worried about the video camera as the regular camera. (Also a big thanks to J Linn for letting me share video of her work)

In the above clip Sierra was doing so well going around the pool following Dave. When I was trying to video her I threw her off so she is trying to turn toward me. Sorry Sierra for goofing you up.

When Sierra was back out of the pool I wasn't sure if she would want to bolt or what. But she didn't! She went back around to look for J Linn. We think she really enjoyed her swimming today and we look forward to our next session in a week!