Dog injury: I could use a Vet's opinion

[patandchickens]

No dog ACL experience here, but I would suspect that one factor in common with similar injuries in *horses* (which I do have considerable experience with) is the individual animal's temperament. Ligament injuries in general, and stifle injuries in particular, heal quite slowly and are vulnerable to reinjury for a looong time. In principle what you want with this injury in horses is a very slow controlled program of exercise and [controlled] stretching and maintaining as much muscle tone as possible without moving the joint in ways it oughtn't. With some horses you can do more of this than with others, because some particular horses are such wingdings that if you try to get them exercising (even just walking in hand, etc) they will do something excitingly stupid. I don't know how dogs compare in this regard, but the more your dog is of a type to decide one day to try to get away from you and chase a squirrel, or jump up on someone, or whatever, the more careful/conservative you have to be to make sure that exercise does not turn into reinjury. But with horses, this often means MORE handwalking rather than less, because the more a horse is kept stalled the more apt he is to do something stupid when taken out. If your dog is kind of hyper he probably falls somewhat into this category. YOU are in the best position to know/guess what kind of management is least likely to result in the dog's brain falling out and hurting the knee again, which is probably a major consideration in your choice of what to do.

I've seen cold laser work be useful on horse tendon injuries (at the very least, it does seem to relieve some pain in many cases, helping the horse 'use' itself more normally) but I have no clue how well it works for dog ACL injuries.

Best of luck,

Pat

 

[Bluemoon420]

We have a dog who had a torn ACL. He was maybe a year old when he did it, possibly 2. ( he was a foster dog we kept. He kept being returned after being adopted. ) The vet didn't think the surgery was a good option for him. He is very high strung, and felt it would be near impossible for him to heal correctly, and keep him calm. He is 7 years old now, and it's healed on his own. He is well muscled which the vet felt helped him. We keep him healthy and trim because any extra weight would make his knee worse. The only time we've seen him have issues with his knee is during the winter, but this year he hasn't had any issues. He's slowed down some with age, but not much.

He's part lab, and maybe GSD, but the lab part is most prominent. He just doesn't slow down.

Bluemoon

 

[BarkerChickens]

Seems like it the majority think it doesn't help or that it will help some, but not a miracle cure. I am not sure it is worth $600 to see if it works.