Last week Lucy injured her rear left leg while playing ball. I had to carry her home from the park and it lay limp for the first few days afterwards. The vet gave her some Vetprofin to help with inflammation and we took her to a orthopedic doctor yesterday. The doc said it’s a partial Cranial Cruciate Ligament (CCL) tear and also thinks her other leg experienced a similar tear years ago.
Surgery was presented as an option, but she is likely to end up with some arthritis when she gets older either way. After doing a little research we found a number of cases where the dog healed without surgery back to near full strength.
After 5-7 days she has started showing signs of improvement, but has a long way to go. Since ligaments are not living things they won’t grow back, instead scar tissue will develop around the knee area to stabilize it. We are going to give it 6-8 weeks and see if we can rehab her, then reassess to see if surgery will be needed.
I’m hoping her days of trail running, swimming, and ball chasing aren’t over just yet. At 4-1/2 she has a lot of years still in her. In the meantime, we’ll try and keep her from running and will need to crate rest her for quite some time.
Hope Lucy is doing better.
Oh no! Poor Lucy! Our yellow lab Maia had surgery yesterday to remove a cyst from her paw. She is definitely struggling to get around, but I think she will make a full recovery. She is 9 but likes to pretend she is 2. Hopefully Lucy will take it easy until she feels better.