acl surgery

[jpettit]

guys i need some input, i received almost the worse news you can after the wife took our 1 year choclate lab into vet for slight limp, he tore his acl which would require surgery. he is about 75 lbs. he lims alittle when first getting up & moving but when is playing seems to run fine & walks ok & doesn't seem to be in pain. i am not a cheap SOB (he has been to upland & obedience training) if the wife was not getting laid off i would not really hesitate at the est. $2,500.00 surgery. has anyone out there gone thru this we are looking for options. our vet said they do get used to it & can function ok. i understand that we cannot hunt him as hard as our other lab, but want to do the right thing. (we are ok with him being a pet & not a hardcore hunter)

also is the surgey a gaurented fix?

please help us make the right decision.

thanks,

Jon

p.s. if surgey is the consensus my next posts will be in classifieds for used items for sale.

[just_jig]

My yellow lab did the same thing. She seemed good for awhile than latter on 4-6 months, things got worse and she would jar the knee causeing great pain - yelping/crying couldn't put the foot down. Had the surgery done in Ely - $800.00. Later tore the other knee (not uncommon) another $800.00.

Very glad we had it done, no more pain. If you don't have the surgery done, plan on putting the dog down. My opinion.

[jpettit]

thanks for your input that is what i am looking for, people that have had been unfortunate to have to of gone thru this. Putting him down is definetly not an option. hae you had any problems after the surgery or did it fix the problem?

again thanks for your input.

Jon

[MinnesotaMike]

Had the surgery done with our black lab $800+ at the vet in Forest lake.

He recovered just fine and hasn't had any problems with the other side.

Look around for options to your $2500 estimate.

Good Luck,

Mike

[just_jig]

For the most part she is good. Gets a little sore after a long day of play or work. Sits more on her hip, not butt like she used to. The big thing is no pain.

[bottomdweller]

I paid almost 3000 back in november. My dog is doing great back to full throttle and running agility trials. For eight hundred you are probably getting what they call a fish line type. Cheaper surgery but the line can break and your back to square one. If your dog is going to be hunting I would opt for the better surgery, I wouldnt want to have to put the dog through it twice.

[herm]

My lab and I feel your pain! My 2-year-old, 75-lb lab was diagnosed with ACL tear a month ago. After some research and advice, we opted 3 weeks ago for the TPLO surgery. It's the expensive version and is supposed to allow her to return to 100 percent within about 3 months. (So far, it's been a struggle. She was diagnosed yesterday with a broken tibia, which the vet said happens in 5% of cases; another story for a different time.) Anyway, we went TPLO ("expensive") because she is only 2 and we want her to be able to hunt again. All research I did showed that the "fish line" surgery made that outcome very unlikely. She is simply too big and the fish line would not hold up to anything more than being a house dog. Truly, I feel your pain. It's your call, but if you want her to do anything more than be a house dog, look at the TPLO surgery. Best of luck! In a word, it sucks no matter what. (OK, that's 5 words.)

[herm]

A few more things to pass along. 1. None of the surgeries are guaranteed. TPLO is best odds of full recovery. 2. I posted "Recovery Tips from TPLO Surgery" thread a few pages ago - and it might be helpful to read as several people offered input. 3. In my research of TPLO, I never found prices less than $2000 that were within a reasonable driving distance of home. 4. Finally, even though I'm only in beginning recovery stages, I echo the earlier post about doing what's needed so the dog is pain-free and we don't have to go through this again. Again, good luck.

[GFNER]

My female lab had the "fishing line" surgery done on both legs. She was about 80 lbs. (part of the problem). Afterwards I put her on a diet, got her down to 70lbs and never looked back. I never hunted her after but she recovered very quickly, could still run and had very good mobility. Times are tough, money was short and my main concern was saving my pet and her being pain free.....Mission accomplished. Good luck!

[Bryce]

Had this done twice in the late 90's over the course of 3 years. Pretty sure at that time it would have had to have been fishing line type. Dog recovered well in less than 3 months and went on to hunt (hard) until 10+.

[jpettit]

again guys thanks for your input, i did not personaaly talk to vet & have yet to do so, so i apoligize if this is the same as TPLO. (i will read that post closer) i am cetain w willbe having the surgery done. i live in Buffalo Lake S.W. if hutchinson & am going to look for the nearest Good Dr. to do surgery so if anyone has a reputable dr, within reason i appreciate the name & #.

i am passing on the Lasik surgery & will be posting in the classifieds.

(pickup camper 4 stroke motor etc.

will keep posted on results.

thansk again everyone.

jon

[Bryce]

Dr. Levine did ours. He is based out of Inver Grove Heights but pretty sure he still travels around the metro operating in several locations.

[duckbuster]

Chances are very likely that those of you who have had one side go, be prepared to do the other side at some point. The majority of the time once you do one you will do the other.

I pay roughly 2 bills a year for pet insurance for this very reason. I would strongly suggest dog owners should look into this. There are several out there to look at, AKC and pet plan would be a couple right off the top of my head.

GOOD LUCK

[duckbuster]

Everything I will tell you is purely anecdotal and unsupported by controlled double blind scientic study but these are observations from 40 years treating and training athletic dogs and discussions with the surgeon(s) who has done thousands of TPLO since 1993 or 1994 when I urged them to learn the procedure.

CCL tears were not unheard of but beginning in the late 80s seemed to increase in incidence until today when it seems almost epidemic.

Most tears were in adult dogs middle age and older, I never saw a juvenile tear until the mid to late 90s, by juvenile I mean dogs 5-10 months old.

We used to tell clients that after the first tear dogs had a 30% chance of tearing the opposite side. Now it is closer to 50% and young dogs +\-2 years who tear them have an even higher incidence of tearing the opposite side. This has nothing to do with the repair of the first tear or overloading the normal leg, rather the factors which contributed to the first tear exist in the normal stifle.

If we could identify those factors it would help or possibly prevent the high incidence of CCL tears in performance Labradors.

Some theories include genetic predisposition (slope of the tibial plateau, narrow intercondylar notch, small or weak ligaments). Some believe that the precursor is an immune mediated joint inflammation which weakens the ligament.

The good news for us all is that CCL tears are the most consistently repairable joint injuries in the dog thanks to the very innovative late Dr. Barclay Slocums tibial plateau leveling osteotomy which has been performed successfully on hundreds of thousands or perhaps more than one million dogs world wide over the past 2 decades.

This quote came from a vet friend of mine in Dallas and is a heavy hitter in the FT game

[jpettit]

thanks for the info the surgery is going to happen i am trying to find a good Dr. in a reasonable distance. please keep the info coming along with any names of Dr.s you recomend, Chewy is more than a dog he's family.

[InTheSchool]

Make sure the limp is from a tear and not lymes disease. The is a cheap ($35) quick blood test the vet can do in minutes. After surgery, there will be a long recovery period with limited activity for your dog. After research we opted to not have the surgery and limited our dogs activity fed glucosomine/chondrotin/msm and helped him lose weight. After a year he was much better with a slight limp we took him to a different vet and found he had a tick borne disease (not lymes but similar). Unfortunately there was already some arthritis in his joints. Wish he would have been tested when he first hurt his knee.