Abby's Surgery
Abby in the car on the way home from the vet
Last year Big Abby (Abby's Big Sister) hurt her knee. She was playing fetch and came up lame after chasing the ball. A trip to the vet revealed that she had torn her ACL. (Ok, in dogs it's called the Cranial Cruciate Ligament but the structure is equivalent to the Anterior Cruciate Ligament in humans. Even vets tend to refer to it as the ACL.) Just like a human who gets hurt playing in the NFL, she needed to have surgery to fix it. She was laid up for two to three months afterwards. Abby missed running into her sister on our daily walks. The surgery was successful though and she healed well. Now she is as good as new. Maybe better.
Abby has never been real tough physically. She wants to be. She loves hiking in the mountains and tearing around chasing squirrels. She usually pays for it later and limps around for a day or two afterwards. This fall she hurt herself somehow and was limping badly when we hadn't even done anything unusual. We took her to our vet and it turned out that Abby had a partial tear in her ACL (oos - I mean CCL). She was also starting to develop hip dysplasia.
Abby is four years old - still a young dog - and she loves to be active. We wanted to do whatever it would take to keep her that way. The vet recommended a series of injections for the hip. So for the next month we took her in twice a week to get a shot. Abby is a smart dog and it didn't take long before she was pretty negative about going to see the vet. Can't say that I blame her. I wouldn't want to go somewhere either if I got stabbed with a needle every time.
Not feeling well the day after the surgery
But that was the easy part. For her knee the vet recommended surgery, a procedure known as TPLO: Tibial-plateau leveling osteotomy (try to say that real fast three times). It's an interesting operation. It turns out that the knee joint of dogs is not very well designed and produces a lot of stress on the ligaments, much more than in a human knee. That's why ligament injuries are very common in dogs. The surgery doesn't actually repair the ligament. It modifies the structure of the knee so that the ligament isn't stressed as severely. In Abby's case, the vet thought that after the surgery the ligament would heal on it's own.
We decided to have the operation done at WestVet, the largest animal hospital in Boise. We met the surgeon and he gave us a really good explanation of everything that he would do. Since Abby would stay overnight to recover we also felt more comfortable with WestVet. They are open 24/7 and always have staff there who would be able to monitor her. Yes, we worry about Abby just like we would any other family member.
They had an opening later that week. The only problem was that I was commited to go out of town for the weekend to BottosCon, a wargame convention in Vancouver, Canada. Sandy would be on her own nursing Abby for a few days. She still said to go ahead because she wanted the surgery done as soon as possible.
A shaved leg and a big incision
Tuesday, October 30 was the big day. We took her in that morning and as usual, she didn't want to leave us to go in the back with the vet technician. This time she might have had good cause. It was tough for us to leave her there. It sure seemed awfully quiet when we got home.
She had her surgery in the early afternoon and the vet called us afterwards to let us know that it went ok. WestVet did a good job of keeping us updated. They called later that night and first thing in the morning with status updates. They know how much people worry about their dogs.
It was a good thing that we had left her overnight. She had good care and by the time we picked her up she was eating and drinking and had already gone to the doggie toilet. Until a dog is able to do those things they may need special medical help but now we were pretty confident that there weren't going to be any major complications. She was pretty unsteady when she got up. We used a sling to help support her so that she didn't have to put any weight on her leg as she limped outside. I had to lift her in and out of the car. As soon as we got home she collapsed on her bed. She still seemed groggy
Snuggling with one of her stuffed friends
I have to admit that Abby did look pretty funny. Her left hind leg was completely shaved. It looked like some kind of punk dog haircut. All she needed was a tatoo, a piercing and a studded leather collar. It did make it easy to see just how thick her coat really is. She also had a patch shaved on her foreleg. There was even a one inch square just above her tail that was shaved. It was probably for some kind of monitor but I thought it looked like she had a USB port.
She was pretty quiet that day and night. She probably didn't feel good and she was taking pain medication. We set up an air mattress downstairs so Sandy could sleep with her in the family room. The next day I left for BottosCon. I felt badly leaving but it had been arranged long before and Sandy hadn't wanted to delay Abby's surgery until I got back. I had a good time there but wanted to get home. I left early and was back by Sunday evening. Then it was my turn as Sandy went to Portland for two days on a business trip.
Abby was getting around fine on three legs by now. She only needed help with the sling the first day that she was home. Since she is used to sitting on all of the furniture in the house it wasn't long before she jumped up on the couch. It was an impressive feat with only three legs but we were worried that she could hurt herself doing that before her leg healed. That meant we had to block it off. We have a large sectional and we had to completely cover it with stacks of pillows and quilts. Fortunately one thing that we have a lot of is quilts.
The Cone of Shame does not look comfortable
We also set up the old gate that we used when she was a puppy so that she couldn't go upstairs. We didn't want her climbing the stairs yet. Worse than that we were worried she would jump on the bed, which is really high off the ground. Since she is used to sleeping with us we knew that she would make a fuss all night if we left her downstairs by herself. That meant one of us stayed with Abby every night and slept on an air mattress in the family room. Sandy did it while I was away and then it was my turn for a couple of nights when she left. After that we traded off every night for the next week or two.
We also had to make sure that Abby didn't hurt her incision. For the first few days she didn't pay much attention to it. After a while though she wanted to lick it. There have been times in the past when she had a sore, say on her paw, and she licked it completely raw. We did not want her to open up her incision so we had to keep a very close eye on her until the two week mark when the wound was healed up and she got her stitches taken out.
More comfortable but it still looks ridiculous
Most of the time it was enough for us to watch her and stop her when she started to lick. But there were a few days when she was determined to lick her wound no matter what we did. We had no choice but to put the "cone of shame" on her. She really did not like that. Besides being uncomfortable it was very awkward. Anytime she walked somewhere she would bump into the walls or furniture. She could barely even lie down. She was not happy when she had it on.
I also had to admit that she looked pretty funny with it on although I'm sure she didn't see the humor in it. We had two differnt cones. There was a large one that was very awkward and uncomfortable but very effective. We only used that for a few hours when she was really determined to get at her incision. There was a smaller blow up one that wasn't as bad. We still had to watch her when she wore it because she could reach the wound on her leg if she was really determined. She also still looked really silly wearing it. Fortunately after a few days we were past that stage.
After about two weeks Abby was feeling good again and was getting around well although she still favored the leg that had the surgery. Now the challenge was keeping her down. She was getting bored. Labs are active dogs. She wanted to play, to go on walks again, to jump on the furniture. We did the best we could but every once in a while she would pull down a pillow and climb on the couch, or sneak through the gate and go up the stairs. Getting a four year old lab that is full of energy to take it easy is a tough job.
Napping on the floor in the family room
Gradually we were able to relax the restrictions. I started to take her on short walks and by four weeks we were back up to our normal half hour walk around the park. At six weeks we took the cushions off the couch and let her join us when we sat and watched football games on tv. At eight weeks we saw the surgeon again and he said her bone was healed. After that we took down the gate and let her go upstairs. We were still a little nervous about her injuring her knee if she jumped up on the bed though. Since our bed was really high we took it off the frame and set the mattress on the floor. That way Abby didn't have to make such a big jump.
Sandy decided that as long as we were adjusting furniture we should rearrange the entire bedroom. That meant moving some heavy items like our dressers. Unfortunately Sandy hurt her back in the process. It probably wasn't a good project for two old people. She was laid up for a couple of weeks and I got to play nursemaid for her, but that's a whole nother story.
As I write this it's been almost ten weeks since Abby had her surgery and she is just about back to normal. We are back to taking two walks a day. She seems to move very well without favoring her leg at all. Her coat is even partially grown back. Pretty soon there won't be any sign left from her surgery. It appears to have been a success and she seems to be as good as new. I'm looking forward to trying a real hike in the mountains with her this spring.
