Hi @lavieestbelle!
Well, regarding my own experience… I’m right in the thick of it!
In my case, my dog had been limping since the March 2020 lockdown. The vet put it down to arthritis, prescribed anti-inflammatories for when it flared up, and some days were better than others…
But two months ago the limping got worse, and then one day on a walk about a month ago—"snap"—the dog started screaming and wouldn’t put his paw on the ground AT ALL. Off to the emergency vet; they suspected a ligament rupture, which was confirmed 6 days later by an X-ray.
The operation was scheduled for 15 days later (in the meantime, my dog, who is very determined and doesn't make a fuss, went about his life almost "normally").
He had the surgery on 3rd June at a well-known orthopaedic clinic (Alevetia in Thionville). He went in that morning and we picked him up the same evening.
The way they do the operation is by fracturing the top of the tibia, inserting a screw and a plate, and realigning everything with the femur to act as a substitute for the torn ligaments (something like that). When we picked him up that evening, the vet told us straight away that it was a complete rupture and that he must have been in a huge amount of pain… my poor baby…
And that was the start of the nightmare… The first night he did nothing but cry because it was impossible to get him to take his painkillers. (Between the anaesthetic and the fact he hadn’t had a drink since the day before, his mouth was all sticky, he was foaming at the mouth and wouldn't take anything).
Gradually he cried less the next day, then the day after not at all, and by the 3rd day he was putting his foot on the ground (pure joy :)).
Then, six days after the op, we had a brief lapse in concentration during his very strict recovery. We forgot to close the patio doors and a dog ran past the garden fence, so he went for it, jumping and running… a total disaster… At the time nothing seemed wrong, but that evening he was walking and suddenly screamed and wouldn't put his paw down again (here we go again…). Back to the emergency vet; the X-ray showed a tibial fracture. We were absolutely gutted…
So now his strict crate rest has been extended. We’ve had to stop the knee rehab because the priority is letting the fracture heal. We’ve got a follow-up X-ray in a week and it’s vital that nothing has moved, otherwise my poor baby, who is already traumatised, will have to go back under the knife. It’s so frustrating because his knee was doing great (the healing too), and more than anything we just want to move forward, not go back to square one with more surgery, anaesthetics, the cone, another scar and all the fallout that comes with it…
Mind you, we were warned: statistically, a dog that ruptures the ligaments in one leg will likely do the other one sooner or later… They were very clear that it’s a degenerative condition, so at best we’re just delaying the inevitable… though we're still holding out hope that we won't have to go through it all again with the second leg.
