3 year old Boston surgery success story!

by Ss
(San Pedro, ca)

Before going into the surgery I searched these sites for information so I thought I would share our story. After 3 years we discovered our baby Luna had more than likely had this problem since she was a baby. A luxating patella. But not until she was 3 did we realize she had not been putting her full weight on her right back leg. Soon after we noticed that she got to the point where she was barely using it and her muscle was diminishing, as soon as she started limping we took her to the vet.
We followed all of the guidelines To the T. She was crated for a week after surgery. No running, jumping or playing for over a month...long story short, after 10 weeks she was still not putting any weight on her bad leg! We were starting to think she would never walk again because the muscle was completely wasted away and she refused to use it (I'm sure because it was not strong enough to hold her weight). We had tried everything so we thought, we tried having her swim in our tub, taping her back legs together a couple inches apart, putting tape on the paw of her good foot so she would be forced to use the bad one. Not until this week did she Finally start walking on all 4s again!!! Here is what we did. A 30 minute swim in a pool (not bathtub) for 5 days in a row. Her muscle literally went from non existent to visible! But she was still barely putting weight on it. After her muscle was stretched out from the swim we would do 100 range of motion exercises. Since then we have been taking her to a sandy area (where the pads of her feet won't get hurt) and I run in front of her and call her while my husband holds her leash for some resistance. She is so excited to try and catch up to me that she starts to use her bad leg, somfar in the past few days doing this her muscle has gotten so thick! She actually started using it a lot!!!!! This is such huge progress knowing her muscle was completely withered away not that long ago. I hope this is encouraging to those of you who are in the same situation!