Boomer went back for his 4 week check-up and he continues to make great progress. He is more and more like himself and we have to try to stop him from doing all of the things that he really wants to do. Boomer really loved to jump before and now he wants to do that again. He sneaks a jump up onto the couch or onto the ottoman that's in the front window. It's hard to yell at him for doing things he did for 7 years without a problem, but now we're concerned because we don't want anything bad to happen to him again.
Boomer also got a haircut so that the hair growing in would look more like the hair that was shaved all the way down.
Justin jokes that we got him a "fade". You can still tell that his back is a little bit shorter than the rest, but hopefully it will grow in well together. You can also see how skinny his legs are when he is shaved down this far. It's amazing how skinny he really is. His back legs just look like little chicken wings. We're working on making sure that he keeps moving his legs and massaging them too. Hopefully this is aiding in his recovery!
So we were also told that Boomer should not be jumping up on things, or really down because of the compression. He started to do the three stairs out on our front porch and so we decided that it was time that Boomer could do stairs to be able to get into our bed. I did a lot of research and found stairs that made it so that he can easily get up into the bed:
Wal-lah! Stairs!
So, I figured maybe the bed and getting up there wasn't motivation enough. I knew that he loved his windows, so I quickly moved the stairs in front of our back windows and magically:
He knew exactly how to do those stairs once they were where he really wanted to go! He was so happy to be able to see out his window on his own. It was so hard to get him to come down and use the stairs. When Justin got home from work, we tried the stairs at the bed again and finally after many treats and attempts we got him to use the stairs. I'm proud to say that he's now using his stairs and using them well. He doesn't usually try to jump up anymore (I think he didn't want us to yell at him anymore). Boomer now uses the stairs to go up and down. Down is still a little less coordinated, but I'm happy to say that he's using them. Progress!!
Boomer is also feeling so well that he is happy to be hopping all over again:
Those back legs are pretty good and we're making some awesome progress. He still does get really tired really quickly, but we're working on his stamina again. We've started to take him for his nightly walks again and he's keeping up. He also likes to gallop through the yard and go up and down the hill. We're so thankful that he's getting to be more and more like himself again.
I love seeing this happy face want to play and run around again.
Another awesome thing that we had sent to us was from the staff over at NC State. I got this awesome email below:
Hi Ms. Smith,
I am one of the vet students on Dr. Olby's summer research team. I wanted to let you know that Boomer is mentioned/pictured in a recent news piece on the NCSU Goodnight Scholars Program:http://emas.ncsu.edu/
The student highlighted by this article, Leighanne, is helping us with the treadmill study that we're doing as a joint effort with the school's biomedical engineering department. A photographer snapped some great shots of us while we were getting data from Boomer last Tuesday. I hope you enjoy the article! Thanks again for letting us borrow your little guy for our research. He is SUCH a pleasure to work with!!! And he's really getting to be an expert treadmill walker too!
Cheers,
Make sure you click on that link and see him in action on the treadmill! It's a great action shot and shows what he does when they have him down at the vet school. I'm glad that Boomer is such a trooper and can help them with their study. Who knows if he would have had the human protein if he would have progressed faster than he did, but all I can say is that we wouldn't have our Boomer Bear here without the help of NC State and Dr. Olby and her awesome study!
Boomer heads back in a few weeks for his last visit with Dr. Olby's team.
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