Very Bad Timing/Torn ACL

Labman

Labman

New member
Evening of October 26th, we were just getting set to load the vehicle and head to SD for our second 5 day period hunt. My dog is almost 9 years old, and has been limping on her right hind leg. I mostly blocked with her on our first trip back to SD for pheasant opener, because of her arthritis/soreness in back right leg. Anyways, the night were going to take off to SD for our 2nd trip, I call her to put her in the kennel so she wouldn't get sore from running around with the other dogs, and she ran up on the curb and let out a loud yelp, and came up lame on her back left leg. I knew it was bad. She rode in the kennel to SD, and I took her to the Vet the next morning. She tore her anterior cruciate ligament and possibly part of the meniscus. It broke my heart. So, she came along hunting with us. I stayed by the pickup with her, and mostly blocked on the trip just to be with her and by her side.
She's been a great dog! Great hunting dog and family dog. Spoiled Rotten!!!
The vet believes she slightly tore the ligament in her other leg at some point. So, she limps around and is on pain meds. Her hunting days are over, I'm sad to say! We are not getting the surgery to repair the ligament, just too much money.
I used to take her for walks each night when getting home from work. I only hope she can improve enough so she can atleast take walks with me. I know she misses them already, and so do I.
 
Sorry to hear about the acl, that is such a common problem. I did 5 acl repairs last month and I am a general practioner, we referred several other to the specialist for more advanced repairs. The challenge you get with quadrupeds like dogs is biomechanically a large amount of "tibial thrust" occurs when they walk (think of your shin bone moving forward independent of your thigh bone). Thats why some type of stabilization of the joint is important especially for big dogs and even for most lightly active large pets. Shop around, maybe the specialist repair is out (TPLO or TTA procedure) but there are other ways to repair. At the very least try to stabilize the joint with a brace, there are a couple commercially available, I think one is called orthopet and another at dogleggs (may have to google search). The joint will get slightly better by itself over the next few weeks as it naturally scars-in post-trauma, there will be times when the dog will even seem sound at a walk, even tear after a rabbit but it is still unstable and doing damage/hastening crippling arthritis. I would encourage you to do something to stabilize the joint but by all means be a good steward of the resources/finances God entrusted to you.
 
sorry to hear, I've been through this twice with one of my Goldens in the past 10 months. We had TTA

Is there a vet training hospital or university that could do a tightrope or something similar at a reduced cost to get the leg stable? As noted, I think you'll be surprised how quickly that knee will deteriorate without any intervention. Best of luck
 
What lousy timing, not to mention the pain for your dog.
 
I had the very same thing happen to a young lab years ago. Went for a long retrieve down hill, I could hear an audible pop or crunch, dog came back limping. Became obviously more than a strain. Specialist preformed what he called at the time "Danny Manning" surgery, after the KU/Pro basketball player who suffered the same injury. Used a nylon strap and ligament splice to tie through the joint, dog in a whole leg cast, oozing through the stitching, rejected the nylon, had to be removed, caste came off, leg withered to nearly nothing, could hardly bear weight. Resigned to a three legged dog. Slowly but surely he began to get better and better. It took 9months, after which he was good as new, leg appeared normal, he was 18 months old at the time lived to be 14 and never took a bad step again, no pain medication or need for it. Was my constant hunting companion right to the end. Take heart, it can be fixed.
 
I really appreciate the information and advice. I looked at the orthopet website, and that looks like it might be promising. Any advice I can get would be great, from anyone. If she has to live out the rest of her life with this nagging injury, it's going to be really hard on me also. Any help she can get would be great. I wish I could do the surgery, but we just can't do it financially. As important as she is to us, we just can't do it. My Vet didn't recommend any kind of a brace. I wonder why that is.






zia said:
Sorry to hear about the acl, that is such a common problem. I did 5 acl repairs last month and I am a general practioner, we referred several other to the specialist for more advanced repairs. The challenge you get with quadrupeds like dogs is biomechanically a large amount of "tibial thrust" occurs when they walk (think of your shin bone moving forward independent of your thigh bone). Thats why some type of stabilization of the joint is important especially for big dogs and even for most lightly active large pets. Shop around, maybe the specialist repair is out (TPLO or TTA procedure) but there are other ways to repair. At the very least try to stabilize the joint with a brace, there are a couple commercially available, I think one is called orthopet and another at dogleggs (may have to google search). The joint will get slightly better by itself over the next few weeks as it naturally scars-in post-trauma, there will be times when the dog will even seem sound at a walk, even tear after a rabbit but it is still unstable and doing damage/hastening crippling arthritis. I would encourage you to do something to stabilize the joint but by all means be a good steward of the resources/finances God entrusted to you.
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I have been doing alot of research on the injury. I came across this website, and found it to be very interesting. I guess there is probably some validity to alot of it. http://www.tiggerpoz.com/

I am familiar with alot of the anatomy of the knee, from studying/majoring in Kinesiology in College. Much similarities between a humans anatomy and a dogs.
 
don't forget the MOST IMPORTANT thing you can control and that is the dogs weight. If random people are commenting how skinny your dog is you are close to ideal. It's a lab so it will act hungry no matter how much feed you shovel at the beast. A lab's motto is "eat everything you can because you can always throw it up later". Not the dry food that causes problems, its canned food, people food or "treats". I know they really like the biscuits, jerky treats etc etc, I like dairy queen blizzards but that doesn't mean I should eat them everyday (damn!). I am sure you are already aware of all this but labs are so easy to get fat, be careful. Best of luck.
 
AMEN to all of that! She's held steady around 76 pounds most of her adulthood. Her last weight at the vet was 72.5 pounds. She is a little taller, not your shorter legged lab. I appreciate the advice!

Yesterday my wife put down her egg nog for a minute, comes back in and Dakota is licking it up like it was put ther for her. My wife had to just laugh, because that's the way Dakota has always been. She'll go out in the morning and the first thing she does is look for the rabbit turds to eat. Then she goes to the bathroom. Trying to keep her calm and from running is going to be hard. She wanted to run last night/this morning when I took her outside.





zia said:
don't forget the MOST IMPORTANT thing you can control and that is the dogs weight. If random people are commenting how skinny your dog is you are close to ideal. It's a lab so it will act hungry no matter how much feed you shovel at the beast. A lab's motto is "eat everything you can because you can always throw it up later". Not the dry food that causes problems, its canned food, people food or "treats". I know they really like the biscuits, jerky treats etc etc, I like dairy queen blizzards but that doesn't mean I should eat them everyday (damn!). I am sure you are already aware of all this but labs are so easy to get fat, be careful. Best of luck.
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