My lab is 7 yr old and the vet tells us he thinks she tore her acl and he doesn�t do the surgery sent us with Carprofen for inflammation and tramadol for pain. We already had her on dasaquin and still do. She is very hi strung when she gets outside it�s full throttle so we are limiting her time out now. I have researched the surgery option some but have no idea who does it or what the success rate is? What is the average cost? Any other options? If anyone has been thru this I�m open for suggestions and recommendations. We are located in Grayson Co. north of Dallas.

I paid $2k and $2500 for my dog's, maybe 3 years apart? But my vet is considered high dollar. It sounds like your dog is acting pretty close to what mine was. Initially he had some trouble for some time, we put him on meds and he made it for a while, but when it went, it went severely. There was no question. When the vet did the first one he told us to start saving for the other, and we were lucky that he went as long as he did before the second one blew.

It's a pretty straightforward surgery, all things considered, the success rate is high. The recovery was difficult because he was still young and it was hard to keep him from doing stuff he shouldn't, but we got through it without too many grey hairs. His activity level eventually came back close to 100% after the first one. Recovery on the second one was much much faster, but part of that was because his activity level had dropped with age. After he recovered from the second one he was still able to jump up into the truck from a curb, or onto the bed when he thought nobody was looking.

My vet Dr Gleason at Lone Oak Vet clinic in ValleyView did one of our dogs several years back. She was a smaller dog pit bull/jack Russell mix. She was only 3 at the time and had no problems for the next 10 years. She had lots of crate time to heal. Then a lot of swimming to rebuild muscle. I don�t have his number handy but I�m sure google can find it for you. If I recall it cost about a grand.

Thanks I can look him up I'm sure. Willie who did you use ?

Highlands Eldorado veterinary hospital in McKinney, Dr Taylor.

MOST of the time if fully torn they won't put any weight on the leg. MY lab has had a few partial tears but we have avoided surgery. She had one chasing the Frisbee on the beach where she went from a full sprint to frozen faster than I could blink, I thought surely it was fully torn, vet said partial and to do surgery or not was up to me. We decided to let her rest, it took her 3 or so months of very confined activity and she was back to hunting that season for major hunting trips, upland and waterfowl.

Have your doctor send a referral to Dr. Wells at Dallas Surgery center. She does surgeries for several very reputable trainers in the area and just did surgery on my pup. shes one of the best (even had several other surgeons tell me that) but is a little pricey.

Doctor Aycock at Lewisville North Animal Clinic has fixed up a couple of my pointers in the past years.
He doesn't charge you an arm and a leg to fix them up.

It depends on whether you want to do a "figure 8" procedure, or a tplo. Dr's Gleason and Aycock don't do tplo surgery.
Aycock sent his personal ft dogs to Dr Radash in Carrollton, who also did one of my dogs.

Robby

Dr. Radash is a top notch surgeon. He's worked on my personal dogs.

I've referred dogs to Dallas Vet Surgical Center and they do a really good job. Cost of surgery depends on which procedure is done. The 'figure 8' procedure is older, thousands (millions?) have of dogs have been treated successfully with this method. It's typically recommended for smaller, less active dogs. But it can work in bigger dogs also.

TPLO and TTA are more involved and involve cutting the proximal end of the tibia and rotating or moving the the cut bone and putting in place with plate and screws. These stabilize the joint by changing the geometry of the joint. Both work really well in big dogs and active dogs. I know of dog that tore his CCL at a young age and is still competing in hunt tests after repair. Expect probably $2-3k.

There are a couple of vets, not boarded in surgery, who travel and do sx exclusively at clinics. I can't think of the guys name but he came and did a few sx for us when I worked in Corsicana that we didn't offer. I can probably find his name. He does lots of TPLO surgeries.

I have raised dogs and hunted them all my life and luckily have never seen one with a torn ACL. I am currently hunting 9 hounds at times in extremely rugged terrain. Am I lucky or is this problem due to genetics??????? I am sure that one of the vets can give us some insight.
Adios,
Gary

I had two lab mixes that ended up both tearing both their rear knee ligaments. Technically it is the Canine Cruciate Ligament and the knee is called the Stifle, but nobody but a veterinarian surgeon probably cares. In every case it was a catastrophic tear and they stopped using the leg for weight bearing immediately.

Three surgeries were done when they were young. The first two were TTA, tibial tuberosity advancement. The third was a TPLO, tibial plateau leveling osteotomy. The last surgery was done on the male when he was about 9 years old. For that we did the traditional repair, the figure eight or Extracapsular Imbrication Surgery. The traditional repair was least expensive and did well on the older dog since he'd started being a little less active.

All the surgeries were expensive, but luckily we could afford them. We didn't want to leave any of them crippled and certainly weren't going to have them put down just because the surgery was expensive. I'm not sure what the decision would have been if we couldn't have paid-- luckily didn't have to cross that bridge.

While traumatic tears of the cranial cruciate ligaments do occur in young athletic dogs, similarly to how they occur in human athletes, I would say a majority occur in older dogs.
What I was taught in school was that its thought to be more of a degenerative issue that occurs as a dog ages. Something like 50% of dogs that tear one ligament will tear the other leg within 12 months.

The surgeries are expensive no doubt. I've diagnosed the injury in several dogs where surgery wasn't an option for financial reasons. Without surgery, the dog will develop scar tissue around the joint (aka: medial buttress) that will eventually stabilize the joint. The animal will have more issue with arthritis as time goes by vs a dog that has surgery to stabilize the joint. It's definitely not an injury I would euthanize a dog over if I couldn't do the surgery.

Or lab tore his and had TPLO surgery about 14 months ago. He came up limping after running around in the woods while we were camping. He was in obvious pain and the vet couldn�t tell if he tore an ACL because it wasn�t fully ruptured. Sent us home with some pain and anti-inflammatory meds and told us to take t easy for two weeks. We did and he was great. A few weeks after that, we were playing in the yard and he came to a dead stop from a full sprint, yelped and laid down. Didn�t put any pressure on it. Vet confirmed it was completely ruptured this time.

Our vet recommended a surgeon that he uses for this and other surgeries. The surgeon was not board certified, but he does 300 surgeries a year. It took place at our vet�s clinic and our vet assisted, so we felt more comfortable with that and it was slightly cheaper than using a board certified surgeon.

Rehab is the key to making sure the knee repaired is good for the rest of their lives and also to help guard against tearing the other one, which has a high rate of occurrence, from what I researched and our vet told us.

The TPLO is the most invasive surgery, but for non-senior and active dogs, it is recommended. We started out doing rehab at home and, once the bone was healed, he got cleared to do water treadmill therapy. It was 12 weeks of confinement in a small space and going outside to air only on a very controlled leash. This is for th bone to heal properly.

It sucks, believe me, but we are glad we had it done. So far, so good.

Good luck.

My lab mix tore his at 7 years old as well. Used the vet in Justin, as that�s where I lived. I think it cost right at 1.5 He tore it opening day, and hunted the last day of duck season.

Make sure the dog stays off it, and be diligent with the physical therapy. Also, if they tear 1, there�s a chance they will tear the other.

I did the cheapest surgery to make sure he had good quality of life, and didn�t know if he�d hunt again. I got lucky, and he could.

Sorry it happened to your dog as well. Best of luck.

Thanks Cow_doc.308. Does the problem occur more often in one breed than others?
Adios,
Gary

I honestly don�t know. I know when I was in school we did a lot of TPLO surgeries on labs and goldens, but that�s also two of the most popular breeds in the country so they could be over represented.

I�ve seen cruciate tears in mixed breed and purebred dogs large and small.

Thanks Cow_doc.308.
Adios,
Gary