Holly update

It’s been a week now since Holly’s trip to the vet last Friday, so it’s been a week since we’ve been to the woods. She’s been having an anti-inflammatory morning and evening and we’ve been limiting her to leash walks- just around the church block morning and lunchtime, and then the longer block down to the high school in the afternoon (about a mile). I’ve also not been taking her around to open up the building in the mornings to avoid the various staircases as she doesn’t seem to know how to go up or down a staircase without flinging herself at it 🙂

Anyway, the upshot is that it seems to be working- we’ve seen no evidence of a limp since last Friday 🙂 My guess is that she had pulled or slightly torn something, and it just wasn’t getting the chance to heal as she is so focused when running around the woods she ignored any discomfort. So, it’s been a tough week for the cat (Holly has been refocusing some of her pent up energy on extra cat herding), but I think it’s been worth it.

Today I decided we’d expand our horizons a little and add a little distance to our walk to use up some of that extra energy and start working towards normal activity, so we went on down the Post Road, past the High School and on to turn down onto Playland Parkway, down to Jody’s and back along Milton Road- according to the gps in my phone a walk of 2 3/4 miles. We took it at Holly’s pace (meaning I let her stop and sniff whatever she wanted- she needs the mental stimulation too) and she seems to be nicely tired out.

I’ll keep an eye on her, but if there are no ill effects we’ll keep that that walk for a couple of days, then expand a little at a time until we’re up to about 4 miles by next Friday (which sounds a lot, but remember she usually does twice the 3 miles or so I do, and most of it’s running), and then we’ll head back, gently , to the woods and letting her off leash. Once we get to that stage we’ll start with the short loop and work our way up gradually to our normal walk, but I’m going to wait until it’s been a a good month before I start to phase the tennis ball back in.

So, that’s the plan, fingers crossed it’ll work out that way- I’m going almost as stir-crazy as Holly missing our walk in the woods every day 😉