Some funny stories

Do you have any four legged social butterflies living in your house?

All of my Rottweilers loved people so much they made friends with anyone who just said hello to them. One day I had Bess out front without a leash. It was a warm, sunny day. Two cars came down my street from opposite directions and stopped in front of my house. The drivers knew each other and had their windows rolled down and as soon as Bess heard one of them say "Hi" to the other she thought they were talking to her and she ran right over to the car to say hello. Out in the middle of the street. With me hobbling after her swinging my cane trying to get her back in the house.

I have written before about my first male Rottweiler, Nikko Bear, who we called The Babe Magnet. One day my wife and I had all the dogs in the back yard and the woman who lived behind us came home from shopping. We watched her make several trips carrying her bags of groceries into her house. So did Nikko. Before we could stop him he walked up the hill behind our house and followed the women into her kitchen. By the time we got there we heard her talking to her surprise visitor. "Well hello, what are you doing here, I'm sorry I don't have any treats". And so we made a new acquaintance who we never met before.

 

Moving in two directions at the same time

Yesterday I received the final piece of equipment that I expected to need for Bessie's rehab recovery from the knee surgery. I got a terrific XXL sized crate. Unfortunately it took longer than expected to get here and the shipment got lost and had to be replaced. From everything that I have read up on she will need to spend several weeks confined to a crate and only go out to eat and pee. I really like to massive size of this thing and tomorrow I will be replacing Bessie's old small crate with this one and until the surgery it will be her daytime hangout.

I also got Bess an inflatable soft E-collar to take the place of the rigid plastic cones the Vets always use. I tried it on Bess when it came and she took it quite well.

Now for some bad news.

A few days ago I came across some very disturbing information regarding the popular types of CCL repair surgery. The information was so bad I decided to halt my immediate plans for Bess.

Just to clarify this a bit, the acronyms CCL and ACL are interchangeable. CCL means cranial cruciate ligament and applies to dogs. ACL means anterior cruciate ligament and applies to humans.

I came across a very disturbing comment about a bad reaction to a CCL repair. It involved a result that I had never in my wildest dreams would have imagined. A woman posted on Facebook that her dog had rejected the implanted hardware (the metal plate and screws) from 2 TPLO surgeries and required 2 more surgeries to remove them. I quoted the comment and asked how common this was and in the following days over a dozen people replied with similar experiences about rejections and infections due to unsterilized screws and plates. Those personal reports involved implanted hardware rejection before and after the cut leg bone had begun to heal. With something like that happening before the bone healed and needing the hardware removed would be a catastrophic failure. Because of this I must consult with as many Veterinarians as I can before I will allow Bessie to have this done. 

There is more to this story. 12 years ago when Sassy had both of her CCLs repaired the Orthopedic surgeon told me that dogs will sometimes get used to the torn ligaments over time. This was very similar to what my Vet said about Bessie's hip dysplasia, "that she has lived with this all her life and gotten used to it". So I have to take a long hard look. What I haven't mentioned before is that Sassy spent many years on a pain management program with daily Rimadyl and Tramadol and Adequan injections because her surgery also didn't turn out well.

I need to point out that Bessie is not in any pain. She has responded exceptionally well to the Gabapentin and Rimadyl and CBD oil. So we are not faced with a sense of urgency to get this done. I need to have a consultation with my own Vet to get her unbiased opinion because she doesn't do the surgery and has no profit incentive.

No end to the explanations

OK, here is the bad news about Bessie. I tried everything to avoid Bessie getting the TPLO surgery but it looks like there is nothing else to do. My primary concern over surgery was being able to keep her immobilized for much of the day for 3 months to allow good recovery. I will have to make some changes in the house and build a large pen. 

After doing all my research on alternative treatments for healing CCL tears I went in to see Dr. Susan Hodge, the Orthopedic specialist, this afternoon. I had read about expensive knee braces (Posh) and about Prolotherapy for non-surgical healing. 

Dr. Hodge took new detailed x-rays and showed exactly what my Vet at Noah's Ark had told me. Bessie's Left knee has a fresh slight tear. Dr. Hodge explained how the ligaments were made up of strands and what happens in a partial tear when a few of the strands break and when they peel back they wither and die and cannot grow back on to the remaining ligament.

I had hopes for the Prolotherapy because a search of authorized practitioners showed one of them, in fact, was the primary Veterinarian in Dr. Hodge's office. Dr. Hodge told me she spoke to the other doctor and he said he had trained for using Prolotherapy years ago but gave it up because it didn't work very well.

I asked about using the Posh Knee Brace but as I had imagined the problem of putting it on and taking it off every day would be difficult since Bess gets upset when I try to hold her feet, Dr. Hodge said she saw many dogs reject the brace and try to roll over to get it off often causing more damage.

I thought it would be useful to write a comment and explain why I was so reluctant to have TPLO surgery done on my 4 year old Rottie girl Bess who is weeks away from getting her left CCL repaired. I just came across a post-op photo of my previous Rottie girl Sassy who tore both her ACLs 12 years ago and had them repaired in 2007 when she was also 4-years old. I have many photos of Sassy but this is the only one of her taken after the operation that shows the incision.

Eleven years ago I was totally ignorant about ACL surgery. We had conversations with the surgeon but I didn't understand most of it or even the description of the procedure. Because of that I didn't have a clue about what questions needed to be asked of the Orthopedic doctors both before surgery and especially after surgery. I do recall Sassy never had a crate at any time. We had bought a couple of large dog beds that she used. And there was no physical therapy, either.

Within a year after her surgery Sassy was in so much pain that our own Vets had put her on a daily pain management program using Rimadyl, Tramadol and Adaquan injections. Even back then the drug costs were expensive. Without the drugs Sassy wouldn't have lived a normal life. Seven years after her surgery Sassy developed liver and kidney failure. She was 11-years old when she was put to sleep, the youngest of all my Rottweilers to go to the bridge. And her experience left me with a very bad feeling.

 

Update on Bessie.

So sorry for the long delay in posting updates but a lot has taken place since my last post.

Bessie went to see an Orthopedic specialist two weeks ago. The problem was that I had misunderstood what my Vet had told me after doing the physical exam and taking the x-rays. So I thought it was more important to try and fix Bessie larger problem the hip dysplasia.

What I had misunderstood was that when our Vet Dr. Black told me Bessie's hips are a mess, she also said that Bessie has had this problem all her life and has learned to live with it. So at first I was devastated when the Ortho specialist said there was nothing that could be done to fix Bessie. Oh yeah, there was one procedure, a Femoral Head Osteotomy (FHO). But the Ortho specialist described this procedure as such a horrible piece of surgery she would not want to do it. What is does is the Femur is exposed and pulled from the hip socket and the ball at the end is cut off and the Femur is stuck back into the hip and left to heal with scar tissue.

When the light bulb eventually went off in my head and I realized what Dr. Black was telling me, I made another appointment to see the Orthopedic surgeon. We had a long discussion and she carefully explained all the details and took two new x-rays, seen below. Within two weeks Bessie will go back and have her CCL repaired with a TPLO procedure. TPLO Surgery (tibial plateau leveling osteotomy) is for large dogs. This method is preferred on dogs that have a relatively stable knee to start with and Bessie's CCL tear is only a partial rupture and happened only recently.

And that tiny dark gray triangle inside the red circle is the indication that the ligament is torn. The shape happens when the joint tissue becomes swollen and squeezes it.