fourteen month writeup on our 68 pound lab mixes torn CCL, the eight weeks of conservative management that almost held and then didnt, the 5400 dollar TPLO, what crate rest actually does to a young athletic dog and the people who live with him, the week by week recovery nobody shows you, and the other knee statistic they mention after youve paid

Moose is our 4 year old lab mix, 68lb at the time of injury, and fourteen months ago he chased a ball in the backyard like he had ten thousand times before, yelped once, and came back toe touching on his right hind leg. we did the thing everyone does, gave it a week of rest because it was "probably a sprain," watched him improve to a subtle limp, let him loose again, and had him three legged by that friday. first lesson of this whole saga, the get better then worse cycle IS the symptom, a soft tissue sprain heals in days, a partial CCL tear improves with rest and re-tears the moment the dog feels good. our vet did a sedated drawer test and rads, $240 all in, and called it a partial cranial cruciate tear with early joint effusion. she laid out both roads and did not sugarcoat either one.

we tried conservative management first and i want to be honest about it because the internet treats it like either a scam or a miracle. eight weeks of strict rest, carprofen, a joint supplement, and cold laser at $45 a session times six. call it $620 total. and it nearly worked. by week seven he was walking normal, trotting normal, and i let myself believe we had dodged it. week nine a squirrel crossed the fence line, he hit the end of the yard at a dead sprint, and the leg went out from under him mid stride. back to the vet, drawer test now sloppy positive, full tear. our vet said something i think about a lot, conservative management in a big young athletic dog is not really a treatment plan, its a bet that the dog will agree to live at half speed forever, and Moose voted no with his whole body.

the TPLO was $5,400 with a board certified surgeon, including pre op rads, the overnight stay, and the recheck rads at week 8. the honest recovery timeline. the first 72 hours are rough, the incision looks worse than anyone warns you, the cone is a battle, and youre sling walking a drugged 68lb dog to the yard to pee at 2am in the rain. weeks 2 through 6 are the real test, not because of pain, because the dog feels FINE and the bone is not healed. crate rest with an athletic dog is a mental health project for everyone in the house. frozen kongs, snuffle mats, and five minute training sessions of chin rests and paw targets were the difference between a recovering dog and a dog eating the drywall. he licked the incision exactly once when we got lazy with the cone at week 2, bought himself an extra week of it. week 8 rads showed the bone healing on schedule and we started structured leash walks, five minutes longer each week. we added 8 sessions of underwater treadmill at $85 a session, and whatever the skeptics say, watching him rebuild that thigh muscle without loading the joint made it the easiest money of the whole thing.

fourteen months out he is, and i say this carefully, completely normal. off leash, swimming, fetch with rules now (no more dead sprints from a standstill, we roll the ball instead of launching it). the stuff i wish somebody had told us on day one. the sit test is real, a dog with a bad stifle sits with the leg kicked out sideways, we had been looking at that for weeks without seeing it. weight is the whole game, our vet had us drop him 6lb before surgery and the surgeon said it matters more than any supplement. and the statistic they mentioned at the post op appointment, 40 to 60 percent of these dogs tear the other knee within a couple years, which is why the younger dog in this house got insurance the same month. happy to answer anything about the rehab schedule or the crate rest survival tactics, that part nearly broke us and its the part nobody writes about