When your dog tears its cranial cruciate ligament, that is bad news in itself, but what do you do when your dog ruptures both CCLs at the same time? How do you care for the dog? How do you decide what type of surgery to treat it? How do you afford it? Do you have the surgical procedure on both legs at the same time, or do you do one knee, let it recover, then do the other knee? These are all tough questions, and I’ll be the first to …

After running this site for over a year now, I’ve heard many stories, some good, some sad, but they’ve all had one thing in common – everyone absolutely loves their dog. This post isn’t necessary going to be helpful, but it is certainly interesting.
As I’ve been maintaining and trying to grow this site to make it as helpful as possible for people who are looking for information on dog knee injuries, I’ve also paid close attention to our web traffic. I use Google Analytics so that I can see where …

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 …

The stifle (knee) joint in dogs, is very similar to the knee joint in humans, in that there are ligaments that run through the joint providing stability, and just like in humans, there can be many varying degrees of injuries in the stifle joint which makes it very important to have it properly diagnosed prior to rushing into surgery or treatment.
The injury could be something that happened suddenly as the result of a stressful event, or the injury could develop over time through normal “wear and tear”. Injuries that develop …

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 …

When it comes to caring for our pets, we all want the best possible option, however, most veterinarians will have a single method that they prefer to perform, thus leaving you to find another vet if you do not agree with having a specific CCL surgery. Prior to committing your dog to a surgery, you’re going to want to find out what option your veterinarian will perform, the recovery time, what percent of normal activity level will the dog return to when fully recovered, etc. Of all the surgery options, …

TPLO, or tibial plateau leveling osteotomy, is a common surgery performed on dogs to stabilize the stifle (knee) joint after a tear or rupture in the cranial cruciate ligament (CCL) (can be compared to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in humans). Normally, the cranial cruciate ligament (CCL) prevents backward-forward movement of the stifle joint. When it tears/ruptures, the stifle joint becomes unstable and the dog suffers lack of mobility, lameness or loss of use and is subject to chronic and progressive arthritis in the stifle if untreated.
In a TPLO procedure, …