I have a fairly flexible job and have been able to take the past week off to care for Bruiser during his recovery. I can (and will) take more time off, but as I look into the future I am curious what other tripawd parents have done. When did you begin to leave your tripawd at home alone? Did you crate your tripawd? Bruiser was crate trained when he was younger, but as he grew out of crates, we let him have full roam of our main floor. Now, I am not sure what to do with him once he is all healed. I will discuss this with my vet, but it would also be helpful to hear how others have dealt with this issue. Thanks!!
i am very fortunate to be home with gayle and her older sister, so we don’t have the same worries. but, when i am gone, she just rests and hangs out like before the amputation…we do keep the stairs blocked off with a baby gate, and keep the sofa bed open for maximum napping pleasure..
charon & gayle
I had to go to work through it all. Cemil has a kennel where he stays while I’m gone and he was fine there. When I’m home, he’s in the house with me and the other dogs. In the early part of his recovery, he slept most of the time and after that, things were fairly normal. As long as Bruiser can’t fall down the stairs and hurt himself, he’s probably okay by himself when you’re at work. He’ll just sleep. Or do whatever he did before.
I suspect it will be much tougher on you than on him.
Mary
I got by with help from my parents the first time I went through it with Yoda. We moved in with them for the first two weeks. Partly so he wouldn’t be alone so much, and partly because the vet recommended Yoda be either kenneled or in a room with no furniture he could climb onto when unsupervised, unil the two weeks were up (incision fully healed). Yoda wasn’t crate trained and I didn’t have a room in my home that fit the vet’s orders, but my parents did. The only trouble we ran into with leaving Yoda alone was he couldn’t be trusted not to mess with his incision. The cone (e-collar) took care of that.
However, then I went through amputation again with my dog Gerry (he was an injured shelter pup that I just had to bring home after I lost Yoda) his e-collar was the wrong size (he managed to lick around it and if I hadn’t had to work through most of his recovery (and he recovered at my house with the couch turned around) I might have caught that problem sooner. His incision took an extra 2 weeks to heal becuase of that. Gerry was claustrophobic, so there was no crating him either. Turning the couch around worked ok, except for one day he did actually climb over an end table and even though I had chairs on top of the couch, he found just enough space to lie down. But I digress…
If I’d had a flexible enough schedule, heck, I’d take the two weeks for sure until the incision healed, just to make life easier on myself (I’m a worrier). Then I would have also maybe done partial days for a bit to ease my dog back into being alone (probably as part of the two weeks, but whatever). Ahh, that would have been a dream – haha.
Once you get through to the incision being healed, if no problems have cropped up, no reason not to have things go 100% back to normal as far as working and leaving him alone.
I had to go back to work 5 days after Kobe’s surgery – we couldn’t put him in the crate (because of his e-collar) so we used a combo of baby gates and furniture to create a safe space for him (where he can’t try to climb on any furniture or stairs). I was lucky enough to be able to go home at lunch which helped me feel better about leaving him – he did really well every day until we got home.
I wasn’t crate trained, so I can relate. My pawrents started leaving me alone after a couple of weeks, little by little.
I think you’ll find that Bruiser knows what to do to stay out of trouble when you’re away, and is much stronger than you think. Confinement gates help though, you might want to try that at first until you’re confident he is strong enough to handle the big house. Good luck!
I didn’t leave Indi alone for more than a couple hours during the first week. After that, like Gayle’s mom Charon said, Indi slept in her normal spots. I’m still practicing remembering that Indi won’t do anything that will hurt her. She knows her limits. That said, I am getting a baby gate for the stairs for my own peace of mind as much as Indi’s safety.