As you may know, Maia had TPLO surgery on both her knees. The first was her left leg on February 6th, 2018, and the second being her right leg on March 9th, 2018.  Those were some trying times for myself, my wife, and of course, Maia, who had just turned 12 years old the day before her first surgery. It was an absolute gut punch when Maia ruptured her right CCL three weeks after having surgery on her left.

But, here we are, roughly seven months later and I’m happy to report that Maia is doing well. She still is still weak in her back legs as she lost a great deal of muscle after her surgeries and let’s face it, at 12.5 years old, it’s probably not going to come back completely. She cannot jump up on the couch, or anything at all really, and she has trouble still on our tile floors. However, I work with her daily doing our exercises and now that it is cooling down, we are starting to go for walks in the desert, which is her favorite place to be for sniffs and walks. Since snakes are still out here in Arizona, I keep her on leash mostly, but as it gets cooler, I will let her off leash as she tends to want to walk faster off leash and that’s what she needs to keep and hopefully build her muscle.

At home, our go to exercise is the the sit-to-stand exercise. We usually do 3 sets of 10, with a couple of laps around the living room in between sets. My goal when doing sit to stands with Maia is to not allow her to drag herself up with her front paws, but rather make her stand up solely with her back legs. I achieve this by having her sit, then placing my hand on her chest so that she cannot move forward and thus, has to use her hind legs solely to stand up.  It makes a big difference and after doing a few of these, she needs encouragement (via cookie) to stand up as she doesn’t like the work. She is an old lady after all.

The most important thing is that Maia is healthy and happy. She looks forward to her walks and being in the truck with her head sticking out the window and getting fresh air. I can see the excitement in her eyes when I start getting ready to go for our walks.

Now that I’m figuring out wordpress a little bit more, I thought I would add a couple of videos. This is a (very) short video of her walking 4 days after her first TPLO. The video was taken on February 9th, 2018 and her surgery was on February 6th.  It was fortunate she was putting weight on her left leg so quickly after her first surgery as it took well over a week for her to do the same on her right leg.

Another very short video of Maia walking in the desert, 7 months after her TPLO surgeries.