Cruciate ligament

[moggiek]

My 8 year old lab pulled up sharply last night while doing her usual mile a minute mad rush around in the park. Won't put weight on left hind, no visible trauma, very painful. I'm thinking cruciate.

Does anyone have any experience of treatment?

Our lab did hers in. Well other lab jumped on her and did it!

Vet thought cruciate ligament and x-rayed to confirm. Ours had surgery to repair.

We had pet insurance through Sainsburys and it was all covered thankfully as it was around £1,300 from memory.

She still limps a bit sometimes but recovered well otherwise.

Good to know. I've been scaring myself with online stories of poor recovery despite surgery!

My 5 year old golden retriever is now two weeks into his recovery following cruciate surgery. Like you, I was very worried about the operation, as well as the recovery period afterward. But, so far everything has gone really well. He just had his 10 day checkup, and the vet was really happy with his progress. In another two weeks, he'll have another x-ray, then hopefully two weeks after that, he'll be able to have his first run off-lead. After all the scare stories I've read, I never thought he would ever run again - but at the moment the main difficulty is keeping him at a slowish walk on the lead.

My dog has had two cruciate ops-one on each back leg. The recovery time and the physio was a bit hard going (he needed several short walks a day so I had to pop home in my lunch break etc) but he has fully recovered now. The first op was covered on insurance but I had to pay for his second one as cruciate ligaments were then deemed a pre exisiting condition.

Mum's shih tzu did it when he was about two. He had surgery and a rod put in. He does great until he was about twelve when one of the bolts started to poke through the skin. They operated but the rod was fused to a very arthritic bone.

He had two more reasonably good years but in the end the arthritis in his back leg became too painful, his quality of life was poor and mum let him go.

Other than being a bit slower I suspect your lab will be fine, even if arthritis settled in the joint it can be controlled reasonably well. Mums boy had a lovely long life after his op and had arthritic joints where he hadnt had operations so it's perfectly possible the operation had little to do with it.