Monday, January 12, 2009

Ollie's progress (and this summer's plans)

I haven’t updated on Ollie lately but the news is good. He just finished another hydrotherapy session this morning and he's still gaining strength. His walks are longer, although he’s still a bit sloppy with his hind legs when moving quickly or in close quarters. But overall, he is doing very well for having had surgery 6 weeks ago.

However, Sooz is a bit worried about our plans (my plan, really) for her to drive with Grant and Ollie and spend 5-6 weeks on Aspö this June and July. The carefree dog-romping on the island we had envisioned won’t be that carefree for us any longer. Today, we can control Ollie's days pretty closely, and his vet is 10 minutes away. What happens if he goes to a fairly wild island and has a problem again? We avoided his becoming paralyzed by maybe 12 hours last time. That concern is going to be in the backs of our minds no matter how full his recovery is.

That said, we know we can’t keep Ollie in cotton wool for the rest of his life. He is a dog and wants to do dog things. He’s already fairly bored and I don’t want to spend my remaining time with Ollie keeping him from doing things he enjoys.

Our Easter trip will serve as a good yardstick. We’ll know a lot more then about Ollie’s health and abilities, and also more about the details of living in our own house. We can decide then how happy we are about having Ollie join us this summer.

No comments: