Cranial Cruciate Ligament Rupture

[bethi]

In August I adopted an 11 year old Golden Retriever (along with his 7 year old buddy) from a rescue group. Wonderful dogs and I want to give the older boy some quality of life even though he does have some arthritis and seizure issues and has been on heavy meds apparently for quite some time. Three days ago he pulled up lame with what has now been diagnosed as cruciate ligament injury. I know that surgery is the recommended treatment for this but with his age and other health issues he is not a good surgery candidate, especially as the recovery is lengthy. After much research on the internet I am thinking that maybe a soft brace of the type that humans use for this same type of injury in combination with restricted activity might be the treatment for him.

My question is: Does anyone know of a readily available canine soft cast of the velcro-wrap type that humans use for this kind of injury? Everything I have seen so far involves custom prosthetic devices with hinges and such. My thought is that something lightweight that will provide some support used in conjunction with restricted activity will give him some time to heal to the point where he can resume some "normal" senior sedate-type activity.

Any advice? Thanks in advance.

Sorry for this duplicate post in another topic area

[Daveyo]

Get the surgery done. Techniques today is much better than you think. Save the dog from having to suffer all that knee pain. Same thing happens to football players. Most do recover and is fine after the surgery.

You will pay a dear price for avoiding surgery. trust me.

[hokesterz]

Hello! Please stay with your gut instinct about simply limiting activity and the brace. I can speak from experience from my 4 year old lab, who torn his CCL 3 months ago - he is healing well with conservative treatment - meaning, NO SURGERY. Especially for a golden of that age, that is just too mcuh to put an animal of that age through. I am a believer and highly respect veterinary science, however, in this particular injury, and months of research, I find the facts are wrong about ligagment surgery...especially when folks are told it will repair a torn ligament - not true. I highly recommend that anyone facing this dilemma, before putting their pet through such an invasive surgery that they visit the link below. I know it gave me a peace of mind and answered that strange gut feeling that surgery was not right for my dog! [moderator note: website address has been removed]

[Daveyo]

Hi Hoke if i can say it this way. I have to admit that your approach is the alternative method, and is worth looking into.

Just the same for Canine Distemper where others said that there is no cure and there is a cure.

So I would say it is a judgment call concerning cruciate tears, and I would have to agree that maybe it best to try the non invasive method with medicine for 6-8 weeks and it might work. If this does not work, then you will always have the surgery option.

The question is just exactly what type of surgery is best. Yes, it is still highly debated. How much does one do to get the repair done properly????? How much do you really need to fix without the doctor ruining everything???

Again how severe is the damage?

So many questions, and yes this needs to be looked over carefully and hopefully the person gets all the proper answers and lay it on the table and decide what is the best method.

Like I said not all VETS have the expertise in that field and many of them cannot even make the right diagnosis of Canine Distemper

go figure.

I made this comment before and I stand by it, and many of these VETS cannot do even the simpliest things right or make the right diagnosis properly. You should see how some of them are in making a diagnosis and how bad they can be overall.

However as long as you get the MRI and X-rays that alone will tell you for the most part exactly what got damaged. Armed with this evidence, you can then do your investigations and decision making process to decide what is best for your animal in the long run.

Yes investigate, gather info, and study and do research and do more until you are certain you found the right answer. You wouln't want to jump in the lake if I told you would you???? You would investigate to find out why I told you and be asking a lot of questions. Never hestitate to ask even if it is a dumb question. Better to be safe than sorry.

[siglumbra]

Our 12 year old golden just had this surgery not yet 3 weeks ago and is not responding well at all. We're seriously wondering if we did the right thing. Frankly, at this time we're feeling like we're going to be out $2600.00 and still have a dog that can't use her leg. At the time we felt pressure - rightly or wrongly - to get the surgery done right away, that waiting would only result in her further deterioration, and that there weren't really any options of using a brace or recovery any other way. But now the muscles in her unused leg have seized up, we're having to do almost an hour of physical therapy with her a day to try to get them loosened up again. We've got another golden, a 2.5 year old, and I'm literally going to have a baby any day now - there was no way we thought that 1) the surgery possibly wouldn't work at all, and 2) we'd have to do an additional hour of physical therapy with her.

You can probably tell from this post that we're disappointed and stressed about what's happening. If anyone has any advice I'd love to hear it.

[Daveyo]

Oh boy. Well, at the moment none of us here knows what surgery method you chose to do.

Did you get an MRI and a X-ray done to view the problem area carefully before doing the invasive method????

I made some comments and made a few good questions here regarding the surgery techniques that many VET doctors say they can do.

Sometimes but not all the time alternative methods do work thus saving a big problem.

For example the knees on a human. We can bend it backward but cannot bend it forward and we have a very slight sideways movement. If you kicked a person standing on the leg full weight, sideways at the knee area, guess what you got, the medial collateral cruciate ligament tear plus cartilage damage on top of it. Very painful indeed.

The same applies on dogs. And the fact that they run so fast all over the place and their movements being so quick, no wonder they have this problem and it is very easy to get by doing just one wrong move.

In fact players in football and in baseball, go to people who are specialists, and who are good and its their strongest forte. Of course they charge an arm and a leg billing wise.

Word of mouth is the big key. Or if people can post the names of Doctors who did very successful surgeries here would be nice and also have a list of those to avoid.

Three weeks since surgery is way too soon to expect a recovery. On average it takes 8-12 weeks. Example if you broke your bone and in a cast it takes minimum of 6 weeks before they take the cast off. After that it takes another 2 weeks just to shake and build up strength again. Now your at 8 weeks. Probably another 4 weeks before you can return back to normal full strength.

Keep posting here and let us know what kind of surgery was done and if you had the MRI done.