Animal Insting

OH MY GOSH!  You will not BELIEVE what they did to me when I went to physical therapy yesterday!  They tried to DROWN ME!  I am not kidding you.  It was like going down with the Titanic!  There was all this water around me, and I could not breathe because of it, so I had to get rescued out of the pool.  It was horrible and scary and the only good part was that Dr. Connie said she would never make me get in the water again.  Whew!



But other than that, physical therapy wasn't too awful, and the reason for that is because they kept giving me lots of treats.  Dr. Connie, who is the therapist, told Mom that I was a very sweet dog and that I was just scared of everything, but I did not try to bite her even once.  Here's a picture of Dr. Connie.  She was nice to me and gave me lots of treats.  Also there was a vet tech sort of lady there, but I don't remember what her name was.  She was nice, too.

So here's what all happened at my appointment.  First, Dr. Connie took me into the back torture room, where they do the physical therapy, and she measured my thighs, and she said I had something called atrophy in the right one.  Atrophy is a bad thing, and not like a trophy, which is a good thing.  Atrophy means that your muscles are getting puny and small because you are not using them as much as you used to.

Anyway, what they made me do was walk up a ramp thing a few times, and also up and down some steps.  And I had to walk over some poles and back again.  Then they made me walk on this weird thing called a treadmill, and it just keeps moving out from under you, so if you don't keep walking, you fall off of it.  I was scared of some of these things at first, but then I figured out that they were maybe not so scary, and also that I could get a treat for doing them.  And this made Dr. Connie happy.

Another thing I did was I had to put my front feet on a disc thing that kind of wobbles around, and it's called a "balance disc."  And then while I had my front feet on it, they kept moving a treat around so that I had to turn my head and it was hard to get the treat, so I had to shift my back feet around, too.  And once I got used to doing this, it wasn't very scary, so Mom is going to order us a balance disc of our very own.

Oh, and another thing I had to do was just sit and then stand up again and then sit and stand up and so on, which is supposed to be good exercise for my knee.  Mom says it's lucky that she took me to that stupid obedience class because at least I can sit on command, which makes doing this exercise easier!

Dr. Connie gave Mom a list of exercises and stuff that I am supposed to do every day, and then I have to go back again next Tuesday and see Dr. Connie again.  But I don't have to get in the pool ever again, which is why I agreed to go back.  And Mom talked to Dr. Connie about Gabe and how his back and neck hurt him and he can't hardly go up the stairs sometimes, and so Gabe is going to go see Dr. Connie next Tuesday, too.  But Mom told Dr. Connie that Gabe might try to bite her, so Mom's going to bring a muzzle for Gabe.  Dr. Connie is going to see if Gabe would like to swim, but Mom sort of thinks he won't do it either.

So anyway, that was my big, scary, exciting experience at physical therapy.  Now we will see if Mom really makes me do all those exercises, like she's supposed to.  I think I'd rather just rest up until next week!