River Update - the bionic dog

I've noticed that this blog gets quite a bit of traffic headed not to the baby pages, but to the dog pages. And I thought I'd just post an update.

In '07, our dog River had her first TPLO surgery. That's right, I said first. She was running around the dog park, not even excessive running or jumping or whatever, no falling, nothing to indicate she had injured herself. We noticed some slight limping on her rear leg, with a strange clicking noise whenever she would walk around. After about a week, we realized she was getting a tiny bit worse every day, and took her to the vet. The clicking was essentially her patella (kneecap) clacking against her tibia.

She had the surgery, and we spent a lot of money at a holistic vet doing doggy therapy in the hopes that she would have a speedy recovery. A fast recovery is essential after a TPLO surgery. Due to the fact that after the surgery, a dog places nearly all of her weight constantly on the opposite leg, once a TPLO is done on the first leg there is a 60% chance she will need a TPLO on the other leg as well.

In January '08, almost a year after we noticed the symptoms the first time, River got off her leash during a walk and ran. We caught her right away, but not before the damage was done. This time, the limping was more severe, and the clacking louder. This time, she seemed to be in constant pain, instead of the intermittent limping we witnessed the first time around. We knew right away what had happened. We took her straight to the surgical vet (the Hope Center), bypassing our own vet completely. And $3K later, River had another TPLO surgery.

This time, we decided not to do the rehab. At that point, it was cost prohibitive for us, and we did not really feel that it had made that much of a difference. Watching her heal the second time nearly as quickly and as well as she had the first time, I do not regret forgoing the rehab.

We are coming up on January '09. River runs and plays and jumps, but she's not going through a metal detector anytime soon. She does not show any outward signs of being any different from our other dog.

She is no longer in pain, and for that I am eternally thankful.

We were blessed with the ability to afford such expensive care for our pet, but still needed help. We used Care First - a program that is essentially a credit card that can be used only for medical reasons at selected health care providers, which included the Hope Center. We were able to use the 3 month, no interest plan, and were able to budget the payments to have it paid off in time.

River - tplo rehab.

Rehab at the holistic vet. She's on a treadmill, using water as resistance. Sigh. The things we do for our babies.

tplo - day 12

river had her staples taken out yesterday. everthing looks really good, the swelling has gone down and the bruising is almost completely gone. we also had a rehab session yesterday, where river walked over some poles that were about a foot off of the ground (think obstacle course), stood on a moving seesaw and flat out refused to walk on a treadmill. oh well.

no more staples!

sitting on the couch.

getting ready to go outside with her towel sling.

tlpo - day 1

we picked river up from the vet this morning. she is alert, and seems to be as good as can be expected. she cried for a little while after we brought her home, but after an ice pack seemed to settle more comfortably.

she is supposed to be under strict confinement for 4 weeks, walking only to go outside to the bathroom.

river resting.

her leg is swollen, with a little bruising and you can see the sutures.

naked butt!

tplo - day 0

we dropped river off at the vet surgery center this morning at 7:30am. she is scheduled to have surgery in the late morning, with dr. nicholson. i'm so nervous for her, i almost started crying when we drove away.
the ironic thing is that she wasn't limping at all this morning.

our vet: http://www.vet-vsc.com/

my poor baby

we got river when she was about three months old. that was november, 2001. a little over five years ago. she began getting arthritic last march. we started giving her a glucosamine/chondroitin supplement, and the limping stopped.
about a month ago, i took river and her older sister janka to the dog park. we were the only ones there, and they didn't run around much. we left after about 20 minutes. that evening, the limp was back with a vengeance. river wouldn't move, and snapped at us when we tried to touch her. for river, this is not only abnormal, it has never happened before. this is the dog who would lick a burglar to death.
the next morning, she was fine. no limping, no pain. we didn't know what had happened, but we thought it had passed.
two weeks later, we were out for a walk when she began the slight 'swagger' that usually means she's had about enough. then carlos looked at me and asked, "what's that noise?"
it was a clicking noise, like snapping fingers.
"i think it's river" he said.
i stopped walking, janka stopped walking. carlos and river went a few steps further, listening.
the clicking came from her left rear leg.
over the next few days, the clicking continued. it sounded like when you crack your knuckles. i took both dogs to petco to update their yearly vaccinations that saturday, and river went to the vet on monday.
after x-rays, the vet said she had torn her cranial cruciate ligament, an injury pretty similar to a person who tears their ACL in a sports injury. she gave us the number of a surgeon.
the surgeon recommended TPLO surgery. Click below to find out more about the surgery.
http://vetsurgerycentral.com/tplo.htm

we have an appointment on friday. keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

more info:
http://www.lauriebryce.com/tplo/index.html
http://petsurgeonla.com/ntplo.html
http://www.knowlesanimalclinics.com/miami/tplo_info.htm