January 7, 2010: Day 36, Winston is less sore

So it's REALLY (ok, for us anyway) cold today.  When I woke up it was -11F and windy, so it was pretty ugly outside when we went for a potty break.  Winston seemed pretty uncomfortable on his leg in that cold, and I don't blame him.  Newly healed tissue, healing bone, and metal plates and screws aren't much fun in the cold.  We didn't go out again until about 10am when it had warmed up to about 5 degrees and the wind had died down.  We did a 5 minute walk all bundled in our coats.  When out walking today and around the house, Winston seems more comfortable on his leg than he was yesterday, so we did a 10 minute walk at midday and then another quick 5 minute walk at 3pm.  Our only outings after that were potty breaks in the yard.

January 6, 2010: Day 35 - Winston's pretty sore

Ok, so the three longer walks yesterday was tough on him.  There were a couple of times that he stood up, and just didn't want to use his leg at first.  He did start walking on it, but I could tell he was saying, "Ouch."  It's snowing and in the teens, so even though we've walked 3 times today, I've kept it to 5 minutes per walk.  He still wants to get out and do it.  Once he gets going, he's not limping too much.

January 5, 2010: Day 34 - increased time on another walk

The weather is still holding nice and Winston seems to feel good, so we tried 3 around-the-block walks and one 5 minute walk.  This evening he still seems fine, but the true test will be tomorrow.  I expect he'll be more sore, but I'm just not sure how bad it will be.

January 4, 2010: Day 33, Increased walk time

Not much to report here.  We've been able to increase two of our walks to around the block (about 12 minutes each) and we've been doing two 5-minute walks in addition to that.  Winston has gotten used to the additional time and activity.  Depending on the weather, we should be able to bump up one of the other walks to around the block.  We're supposed to get a cold snap with some snow on Wednesday, so we'll see what happens.

January 2, 2010: Day 31, Walking around the block again

The weather has warmed up (it's 47 right now according to our little weather station) so there's more dry pavement to walk on.  The rest of the street is either slushy or snowy depending on where we are and what time of day it is, so we tried walking around the block for our last walk of the day on December 30th.  Winston was noticeably tired afterwards, but didn't seem much more sore from it.  On New Years Eve and New Years Day we walked two 5 minute walks and one "long" walk -- it's about 12 minutes rather than 10 so we increased the time just a bit more than the recommended increase.  Winston is no longer more tired from it.  I'm thinking that we might try for a second round the block walk today.  We've already done one 5 minute and one round the block walk.