Elbow Dysplasia in my Golden Retriever - Rehabilitation after surgery

This is the second post of three about my experience of having a dog with elbow dysplasia. Here is a link to the first post:

Elbow Dysplasia in my Golden Retiever - Diagnosis and Treatment

 

The first weeks

The first couple of weeks after the surgery, Link was only allowed out for 5-10 minute walks a couple of times a day. This was slowly increased to about 15 minutes 3 times a day the following two weeks. During this period I also did some flexing and extending exercises with Link every day and I also massaged him.

Before flexing the joint, it had to be warmed up. The first couple of weeks after the surgery this was done with a warmed rice bag held around the elbow.

 Having had pain in his right elbow for what was probably several months before the surgery, the muscles around the joint were very tense, and you could definitely feel a difference between his right and left side.

Rehabilitation Plan

About 4 weeks after the surgery a colleague of mine at the veterinary clinic made a rehabilitation plan for Link for the following 6 weeks. The plan included how many minutes we could add to the walks per week and also some exercises and massage instructions. The plan was that after these 6 weeks the joint should be fine, Link should no longer limp and we should be able to start training him to walk as much as a normal healthy dog.

Link on one of the 5 minutes walks during the first week after surgery. Luckily we lived with my mother in Sweden this week so we could walk directly from the house into the forest behind it.

 One of the exercises in the rehabilitation plan was walking over a series of cavaletti. Originally cavaletti are small jumps, made of wood, used for basic horse training. Cavaletti is an exercise that gives the dog obstacles to walk over. This exercise makes the dog focus on where each foot is being placed and builds coordination.

The cavaletti I used for training Link can also be used as jumps in agility (or obedience). I doubt Link will ever start training agility properly, but I figured that I can at least teach him some agility just for fun, when and if his elbow ever gets good enough.

Link walking over the cavaletti.

 In Link's case, this exercise was also for making him bend his elbow while walking, to increase the mobility of the joint and strengthen the muscles around. In a sense he had to learn how to walk properly again. Below is a video of Link walking over the cavaletti.

We increased the duration of our walks by about 5-10 minutes per week, starting at 15 minutes the first week. So after 6 weeks we were walking about 45 minutes during one on the walks and had in addition two shorter walks a day. Not having gone for proper walks in months, Link had a lot of pent up energy. It wasn't until we passed 30 minutes per walk that I started seeing a change in him. At that point he had started to be able to relax better indoors again. Of course I had trained Link indoors, so he had really gotten to work with his brain, but he never really got physically tired from that. It felt like a blessing when we could walk him properly again. 
The new stretching exercises of the muscles surrounding the elbow, that we started with from week 1 of the rehabilitation plan, gave results pretty quickly. So it was only the first 1-2 weeks that we did that every day, after that we only did it a couple of times per week.
When it comes to the massage, Link really didn't have the patience to lie down for long massage sessions. So I only massaged him one leg at a time. I didn't only massage the bad leg since he had been putting more strain on the healthy legs all along, and therefor the other legs also needed some extra care.

Nutrition

One other thing after the surgery was the nutritional needs of a dog with joint problems. Link was recommended by the vet to start taking glucosamine supplements to prevent the development of osteoarthritis in the damaged joint. In addition to the supplement I also started feeding Link a dog food specifically made for dogs with joint problems. Since they only had Hill's at the clinic where my mother lives, I first gave him Hill's Prescription diet J/D Canine mobility, and the supplement Glycoflex from Aptus. When we came home from Sweden, I changed this to a mix of Royal canins Mobility Large Breed and Specific's CJD Joint support.

Glycoflex to the left (glucosamine supplement), and the tree dog foods made for dogs with joint problems.

End result

So what was the end result after 6 weeks? Well, Link still limped a bit at the start of the walks, because of stiff muscles. The joint was fine however, I was allowed to flex it (as long as the muscles around were relaxed) and Link showed no signs of pain in the joint. So all in all a great success!
I continues to increase the length of our walks for another couple of weeks and now (almost 3 months after the surgery) we walk for up to 1.5 hours at a time and we have started jogging once a week.
Link will need to keep eating dog food for dogs with joint problems and still gets glycoflex daily. I believe he will have to eat that for the rest of his life.