Dog Knee Surgery & CCL Ligament Repair » Our Story

The Day of the Surgery – Dropping Off and Picking Up Your Dog

Kenneth — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 18:21:02 +0000

The day of the surgery can be very hard on both the dog and on the owner. Most of us have very close relationships with our dogs and hate to see them in pain. It is very important however to keep a positive attitude and not to let your dog see any worry in your face or actions. Dogs are very perceptive in picking up the energy of their owners, so if you have an energy about you that presents worry or fear, this will likely have a negative effect on the dog.

It’s also important to try to keep everything as routine as possible, though this may be hard, it is important to try to stay within your normal schedule. One area that comes to mind that is impossible to stay normal with is feeding. Most of the time prior to surgery, the vet will ask you not to feed your dog for at least 8 hours before the scheduled surgery, this is to prevent the dog from vomiting while under anesthesia.

After dropping your dog off for knee surgery, take the day to go home and prepare your house. After most CCL surgeries, the doctor will suggest 2-4 months of no activity, or highly restricted activity. Setup pen, crate or kennel that your dog will stay in, try to make this in an area where the dog will be the most comfortable an where you and your family tend to hang out and/or congregate – the kitchen or the family room is usually a good option. If your dog is a puppy or very playful, you’ll want to make sure that all toys are picked up and hidden as it would be torture to be stuck in a cage looking out at your favorite toy. If you have more than one dog, make sure that your other dogs are not able to disturb or rile up your dog that is recovering from knee surgery.

Picking up your dog is obviously going to be exciting, but at the same time, it is very hard to see your buddy with a shaved back leg and hind quarter and a large bandage wrapping the leg. Move slowly with your dog and make sure that he/she is comfortable in the car before driving home.

When picking up

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The Day(s) Before Surgery – Preparation and What to Expect – Dog Surgery Checklist

The Day(s) Before Surgery – Preparation and What to Expect – Dog Surgery Checklist

Kenneth — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:02:53 +0000

Just like any surgical procedure, knowing that you’ve got to send your dog in to undergo an invasive surgical procedure can be very traumatic for both you and you pet. It’s very important that you try to keep things “normal”, or as normal as possible prior to surgery. Your dog will obviously know that something is wrong by the lack of use, of the leg, and probably from the restricted activity, but it will be very important to keep everything else as normal as possible. Same feeding schedule, same sleeping procedure, etc.

We only had about 4 days of downtime between the injury and the surgery, so we just kept our dog restricted in the house and backyard. Since we had a 2 year old puppy who constantly wanted to play, whenever we had to leave the house for an extended period of time, we’d leave the puppy out back and leave Roxy inside. Though we had a few people tell us she should be in an crate or pen, we decided to just let her have the house to herself – she usually just lays in the sun by our sliding glass door while we’re gone, so we really didn’t have to worry about her too much. This obviously wouldn’t work for everybody.

While we were home, we went about our normal routine. Both dogs had access to the house and the backyard, but rather than leaving the doggy door open as we usually did, we instead left our sliding glass door open in order to make it easier on Roxy with her injured leg. We worried about her trying to squeeze through the doggy door and getting stuck, or worse yet, bumped by our puppy causing her to do more damage to her injured leg, or even worse, injure the other one.

While you try to keep things as normal as possible, your dog will most likely sense that something is wrong. Roxy seemed to get a little bit stir crazy by being left in the house, and our puppy really had no idea what was going on, he had never been left outside alone and now, we’d split them up anytime we had to leave the house.

Day of Surgery: Short Checklist

Make sure that your dog hasn’t had anything to eat or drink in the last 12 hours.
If your dog has had any food or water in the last 12 hours, make sure to inform your veterinarian.
Most vets will ask you to bring your dog in prior to normal operating hours in order to avoid distractions. Arrive on time, whenever that may be.
Sometimes, depending on the vet, type of surgery, length of surgery, and/or length of recovery at the vets office, you may be asked to bring in a blanket for your dog to rest on post surgery.
Stay calm, act normal. No need for long, dramatic goodbyes. That can only upset your dog.

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Diagnosis – How We Determined Our Dog Had A Torn/Ruptured Cranial Cruciate Ligament (CCL)

Kenneth — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:38:24 +0000

As with ACL tears in humans, CCL tears in dogs can be sudden and very noticeable, or they can develop slowly over time. When a person injures their knee and suffers a torn ACL, it is normally going to be very painful and the joint will feel very unstable and in most cases, will not be able to be used. The same will hold true for dogs when they injure their CCL. When our dog tore her CCL, she immediately stopped bearing weight on the leg.

Our dogs CCL was torn while at the beach, our other dog was playing and ran into her at full speed while she had her feet set in the sand and was digging. The impact caused an awkward twisting of her rear leg that was planted in the sand and it caused the CCL to give way. After the impact, she immediately held her leg up and began hopping/skipping and only using one rear leg.

This was an extreme situation, and it was obvious when it happened that our dog had suffered some sort of an injury. Whenever anything like this happens, the dog should be taken to the vet immediately, though I’m not sure I’d recommend the emergency vet anymore. If you’re unable to get your dog into the vet within a few days from the injury, the emergency vet may be your best option, but chances are, they’ll have you take your dog to your primary car veterinarian.

There will be cases where the injury slowly develops over time, and ligament will eventually give way, tearing/rupturing partially or completely. In this circumstance, you may notice your dog limping on occasion (not all the time), probably particularly after heavy activity, strenuous activity or prolonged activity. Some breeds of dogs have knee joints that aren’t physiologically great at bearing weight, and any of the above mentioned conditions can aggravate the CCL, and over time it can eventually deteriorate enough to the point where the ligament gives way. In this case, you’ll want to take your pet to the vet to get an opinion as you begin to notice the symptoms – limping, stiffness, sluggishness, less playful, etc. As the owner, you’ll know when your dog isn’t acting normally. If your dog is developing a slowly forming knee injury, it can often be treated by conservative management, weight management, and sometimes even change in diet. Your veterinarian will be able to give you treatment options and recommendations, but hopefully seeing the signs early will be able to prevent a full tear or rupture of the CCL.

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How Our Dog Ruptured Her Cranial Cruciate Ligament

Kenneth — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:34:23 +0000

We live in Southern California, so the beach is a fun and easy way for us to take our dogs out for exercise. We’re able to just walk along the shore and let our dogs run off the leash and do what they want, it’s far more relaxing than having to worry about taking them anywhere on a leash.

So we were out at the beach and our two dogs were our running around doing their own thing. Roxy (our 5 1/2 year old American Pit Bull Terrier) and our pitbull lab mix puppy happy as clams, Roxy digging holes and the puppy running around everywhere as fast as he could possibly go. Seeing Roxy, the puppy go very excited and ran at her, her back legs were set in the sand from digging, and the puppy never slowed down. He crashed right into her at full speed. She came up limping. She’s had slight hip problems in the past, and had a tendancy to limp a bit after our visits to the beach so we took her home, let her rest and decided to see how she was doing the following day.

The next day there was no change in her leg, she was still unable to put any pressure on it, so we took her into the “Doggie ER”. (Side note – if your dog isn’t suffering from a life threatening condition, don’t bother with a Pet Emergency Clinic – you’ll see why). At the pet emergency clinic, they decided to give her X-Rays to see if her ligament was torn – anyone who has ever had any ligament damage or torn ligaments knows that x-rays do not show ligaments, x-rays can only show bones, so having an x-ray was more or less pointless, unless they were checking for broken bones, which they made no mention of. In addition to the cost of X-Rays ($400) our dog had to be sedated, so that the doctor could “aggressively manipulate the joint” to test for instability. You may read negative reviews of manual joint manipulation, but we really didn’t give ourselves any time to research anything online, so we agreed to go ahead with the procedure. The manual joint manipulation allows the doctor (or vet) to check the stifle (knee) joint for “drawer movement”, this is basically any instability in the joint.

After all was said and done, the conclusion at the ER was that our dog had ruptured her Cranial Cruciate Ligament (CCL, equivalent to the ACL in humans) and we were then advised to take our dog to its primary care veterinarian within the next 3 days. At the time, we didn’t have a primary care veterinarian, but we lucked out because we were able to get a surgery scheduled in the place of a canceled appointment.

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