Dealing with a torn cranial crucial ligament in your dog is never an easy thing, and when you add in the high cost of dog knee surgery, it can become a very stressful situation for both the dog and the dog owner. When you begin to research the type of surgeries available to treat the injury, you’ll find the following primary surgery types which can range anywhere from $750-$3,000 depending on the type of surgery, the size of the dog, etc. Common surgery types used to treat a torn cranial …

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 …

The cranial cruciate ligament in dogs provides stability to the knee (stifle) joint. Any strain, tearing or rupture of the cranial cruciate ligament can, and will, result in knee (stifle) instability. A strained cranial cruciate ligament can, in many cases, be repaired or heal itself without surgery. Strains should be treated with conservative management. Tears and ruptures of the cranial cruciate ligament require more drastic treatments such as orthopedic surgery. When it comes to surgical repair of the CCL, there are multiple CCL surgery options available and it is always …

Though this wasn’t our first choice when dealing with our dogs ruptured cranial cruciate ligament, Conservative Management (or Conservative Treatment) is a non-surgical option of CCL treatment that should be considered by all dog owners prior to surgery.
Consider the human knee for example, you’ve all probably heard of torn or ruptured ACL’s (meaning the ligament is entirely severed), and you’ve also heard of partially torn ACL’s (meaning the ligament is still intact, but has definiate damage. Now, let’s consider a pro athlete, surgery will be necessary for either case – …