Dog version of ACL tear

CIEE83
Sun, 10 Jul 2016 02:52:08 +0000

Our lab had the lateral suture surgery for a partial tear. The original injury was 3 years ago, and he recovered from it, though not completely. The vet warned us that he would probably continue to injure it over time and would likely need surgery eventually. In late winter he started limping much more and had a lot of trouble getting up stairs. He had the surgery 3 months ago. Even though he had a lot of arthritis in the knee (which would have required a knee replacement to fix) he is doing much, much better than he was before surgery, and stairs are no longer an obstacle for him. (He used to stand in front of them for a while trying to work up the will to go up them.) He just turned 10, and I really hope we don’t ever have to decide whether to invest the same amount in the other knee!

The worry with the surgery is that post-op they lose a lot of muscle mass in the affected leg, so if they do anything strenuous too soon, the muscles aren’t there to support the joint and they can ruin the surgery. It takes a long time and a lot of work for them to recover.