by Michael » Tue Aug 24, 2010 10:21 pm
Eh. He's still not eating great on his own. If I don't give him at least 1 supplemental feeding a day his weight declines. However, there has been noticeable improvement in the leg. It's by no means healed. He still limps and mainly sits on one leg. However, he can do things he couldn't do before.
For instance turning around on a perch, he used to have to flap to take the weight off as he turned around. Now he can do it just on his legs (maybe leaning on his beak). He has been flying a lot and it doesn't seem to bother him at all. I'm sure if it hurt to land, he'd stop flying. But he doesn't. And actually he's been REALLY GOOD about where he's been flying to. He has only been flying to training perches around the room, his cage top, or to me. He hasn't been flying up onto the blinds any more (which was what ended up starting this whole mess to begin with). He has been recalling to me pretty well too. Also he can sort of step up now. It's hard for him and he'll aid with beak but he can step up. Remember that stepping up involves pressing off with one leg but then pulling up with the other. So now matter how you do it, there's a moment when all weight is strictly on one leg. So there is no way to step up without putting weight on bad leg but he manages. I don't have him do it much but I do test him every day by seeing if he can do it or not.
Finally, he still remembers his tricks. Wave is the only one he can't do because he has to put all the weight on the bad leg to lift the other one. I have no way of knowing if he remembers it or not. However, he still remembers recall, target, and fetch very well. He does them flawlessly which is surprising cause there have been a few weeks when we didn't do them at all. I'm particularly surprised he hasn't forgotten fetch because we had only done it for 8 training sessions prior to the accident and then 2 weeks went by when we didn't do it at all. And yet when I test him on it, he was eager to do it and did it right. So imagine that? 8 days to learn, 14 to skip, and still knows what to do. Not too bad.
My goal is to get him back in his cage by the end of the week but that will really depend on his ability to fully eat on his own and to be able to climb safely. We'll see what happens. Tomorrow will be the 3 week mark since the break. This healing sure is taking a long time though.