Week 13, only 1 week left

Raven and Sula enjoying the cooler weather outside...no leashes!

 Thursday marked the last stretch for Raven's recovery from TPO.  One week left before we're technically "out of the woods".  This week, Raven has had significant free-play time, off leash walks, and a seemingly normal life. Our concern is still the popping, along with his preference to STILL lay down.  His eating once again returned to "not eating", which led us to seek an allergy test.

Raven and his funky hair cut, a bit of length to it now.

 The allergy test revealed what we suspected:  He is literally allergic to everything we've been feeding him.  The vet alluded to his stomach-lining being raw like a burn victim's skin, causing him pain at every meal.  For now, the only things he isn't allergic to meat-wise are beef, bison, and lamb, without any additives found in kibble or even packaged raw-meat on the market (he is allergic to kale, flax, apples, peas, oats, venison, chicken, and eggs.) .  We bought straight-up raw beef with kidney and heart along with a gallon of aloe for his stomach.  The past few days on this diet have been remarkable, my mom even started tearing up at the sight of Raven's enthusiasm to eat a full meal. We can only hope that this will help him to be in less pain.

Raven relaxing on his pillow pal, Sula.

Our next mission for Raven is to get to the bottom of why he is still hurting.  The new vet we tried suggested two new procedures: removing a hip muscle that is causing Raven pain due to it's tightness from the TPO surgery, or prolotherapy to re-grow and tighten the loose ligaments in his hips.  We are willing to do either or both depending on what will get Raven into a pain-free life.  With Sula's laxity in her hips, prolotherapy might be a God-send for us, because other than loose ligaments, her hips are very close to normal.  TPO seems to only be an option for dogs without hip laxity, because after all the trouble we went through, we are still searching for a way to correct our original problem: the hips popping out of socket, and the pain associated with the laxity.  I will recommend to anyone to do JPS (only works for young puppies) and prolotherapy (for any age dog) before looking into TPO or total hip replacement.  It will save you money, time, and pain.  JPS has a recovery time of no more than 4 weeks and has a small amount of pain (mostly due to the incision), and prolotherapy is maybe one or 2 days of rest with hardly any pain.  TPO and THR both have a downtime of 3 months, and cost you an arm and a leg, plus cause severe pain which might even cause allergies and other health issues like ulcers in sensitive dogs.
 TPO has worked wonders for so many dogs I'm sure, and on X-rays, Raven's hip "look" perfect.  But if you have a dog with any amount of laxity due to ligament damage like Raven...think twice about TPO surgery.  I will continue this blog in order to document our findings about prolotherapy, and hopefully we will give Raven the happy, painless life he's never known.