Immediate post operative care

Following surgery, a strict confinement regime is required. A personal physiotherapy and rehabilitation plan will be provided for your dog. Rehabilitation will take approximately 4 months from surgery. Your dog will not be allowed off lead or to resume normal exercise until then.

For the first 14 days after surgery, the dog should be kept on STRICT cage rest.

DO NOT allow your dog free exercise in the house. Running, jumping, bounding, playing etc, are NOT ALLOWED. Playing with other animals is also not allowed. If there are other pets in your household, you will need to keep them separated.
Your dog must be on a lead at all times when taken out to the toilet. If necessary use a “belly band” (long towel placed under the tummy, just behind the front legs). Your dog is not allowed to go for an actual walk or be off lead when outside.
We would like you to send a picture of the wound 3 days after the operation, to our e-mail address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Please state on the e-mail whether your pet is eating, drinking, toileting and putting the limb down.

General Information:

Most dogs will develop a fluid swelling around the hock during the first few days following surgery. This is quite normal and nothing to worry about.
Your dog will probably be quiet for the first few days, have difficulty moving around and may not eat or drink as much as usual. Your dog will gradually brighten up and attempt to use the operated leg within the first 10 days.
For the first two weeks following surgery, you will need to monitor your dog’s wound. The wound should not irritate your dog. If it starts to weep or becomes red, swollen or sore then please contact either us, or your own veterinary surgeon for advice. These may be early signs of an infection. An “Elizabethan” collar is always required to prevent your dog from licking or chewing at the wound.
During confinement, your dog’s food intake needs to be reduced to help prevent weight gain. Most dogs will maintain their current weight if their food intake is cut by 20-50%. Water consumption should remain normal.
An appointment must be made with Lucy Blackwell our physiotherapy nurse 14 days after surgery, and she will remove the sutures (if appropriate) and start on your pet’s personal physiotherapy plan and rehabilitation.
You will need to return to us eight weeks post operatively for radiographs to check the healing of the bone.
One of the most difficult aspects of confinement is that animals will frequently feel better long before they are healed. At this point, your dog will start being more careless with the operated limb and more likely to become overactive and injure itself. Until the bone has healed, you must adhere strictly to the confinement guidelines and not allow your dog to do more.
If at any time during your dog’s recovery and healing, it does anything that causes it to cry out or give a sharp yelp, please contact us. Following surgery, your dog should always maintain its current level of function, or improve. If at any time during your dog’s recovery and healing it has a set back or decreases in function, please contact us.
It is imperative that you inform us at once if your dog does something that is potentially harmful to the surgery. If something has occurred which jeopardises the outcome of surgery, it is usually easier to correct if it is dealt with straight away, which leads to a better outcome for your dog.
If your dog is too active during its confinement, it may injure itself or slow down the healing, which increases the amount of time your dog must be confined.
Please telephone us on 01442 822151 during our opening hours if you are at all worried about your dog’s progress.

Remember it is vital that you follow your dogs personal post operative instructions which are provided.

DO NOT allow free exercise until instructed to do so at the end of the physiotherapy programme.

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