Itzl had his very last post op visit last night. The surgeon is very pleased with his progress and doesn't think he needs surgery on his other knee.
I thought I'd taken the camera with me, but I didn't. I found it when I got home. So no pics of the vet visit, but I do have pics of Itzl anyway.
Back to the visit.
Itzl is a favorite patient at the vet's and they all called him by name when we arrived. They took us straight back to the exam room, and Itzl promptly shunned the surgeon.
Again.
Itzl has decided the surgeon did something wrong and won't look at or acknowledge his existence until he apologizes. He did the same thing to the therapist, but she apologized and he accepted the apology and now he greets her with a wag of his tail and eye contact. He's the same way with most of the vet techs and the other vets there, but the surgeon? No eye contact, no wag of his tail. Itzl turns his back to the surgeon and refuses to admit he even exists.
This makes the exam a bit more difficult, but Itzl will do as I say, so when I told him to stand up, he stood and I turned him so the surgeon could check out his knee. Itzl kept his head turned away from the surgeon and stared out the window the whole time. You could see his little mind going, "I am not here. I am floating above the flowers, inhaling their sweet scent and glorying in the damply overcast day. There is no one manipulating my knee, that's just a nervous twitch. I am a feather on the breeze, wafting gently among the roses."
Eloquent little beast.
I'd given the surgeon a photo album of Itzl's surgery from his injury to his recovery, and he said it was very useful. They'd used it for several other knee surgery candidates, and really liked having such a complete documentary of one of their surgical procedures. He said they'd already used it for 2 dogs needing the same procedure and it helped to explain the entire process to the pet guardians. Also, that Itzl was just too cute (I included the picture of his drugged out of his little mind face:
)
He wants me to shoot some photos and video of a dog coming in for a stem cell treatment for arthritis. It's an expensive procedure and very few pet insurances cover it, but he is awed by the results he's had from the 8 dogs they've treated so far. 6 of the dogs have had such a complete recovery within 2 weeks that they were moving smoothly and quickly and gracefully acting like a 3 or 4 year old dog, and even the 2 failures still had significant improvement, with mild stiffness on waking and still needing some supplemental meds. Even at that, they were much more mobile than they'd been for several years, so he thinks even the failures are worth treating.
We discussed what we did at MedFair and he mentioned they'd already had 2 people visit from MedFair (both with puppies). I told him we'd watered over 2,000 dogs and cooled off around 500 heat stressed dogs and sent several to the nearest vet with heat stroke symptoms, plus the assorted non-dog animals out there (a grey parrot, an albino boa, a couple of corn snakes and ball pythons, plus a few cats, ferrets, and rats), that we'd handed out all the cards and leashes (some people were thrilled about the leashes because they realized after they got to the Fair that the leash they had was too long; being bale to get a shorter leash made them very happy).
He was very happy and said he'd be happy to refill any first aid supplies I'd need next year and they'd be glad to give more leashes and cards.
So, Itzl is now formally released from care for his surgery and is all better and not needing any surgery for his other knee. The vet was kind of worried that he'd blow it out putting all his weight on it while he healed, but that didn't happen.
Itzl is now allowed to run and jump to his heart's content. I'm still going to restrict his jumping so he doesn't injure his other knee. I have ramps everywhere for Xoco and I just make him use those ramps.
Here's a picture of the two of them after we got back home from the vet's visit.
And because I've been posting a lot of pictures of Itzl, here's one of just Xoco being a goofball to start balancing things out:
And one of her being very cute: