Surgical options and decision time...

Molly is immediately placed on joint supplements, pain medication and anti-inflammatory.

Dr. Gallagher explains the two surgical options:

One is extracapsullar surgery that basically the figure eight support around the outside of her knee. However Molly's breed (bulldog, boxer, pitbull...the muscular athletic types) usually don't do well with this surgery and blow right through it and need another surgery.

Or TPLO: Tibia Plateau Leveling Osteotomy. See link for explanation. This actually restructures the angle of the knee. My vet said that she has seen many many dogs do well with this surgery. She does a lot of rehab and has only seen one dog not do well, however there were preexisting conditions in that dog. She explained that only a board certified surgeon can do this surgery and that they have a surgeon that will come into their office and perform the surgery there.

Of course the TPLO is a more expensive surgery...the first surgery would be about $1800 and the TPLO about $2400. And of course I have to think times two!!!

So I take Molly home and she is on her medication for two weeks...well the joint supplement will be forever but the pain medication and anti-inflammatory was prescribed for two weeks. Molly responds well to the medication. She is not limping and is really wanting to play fetch...but we are limiting her. She is so cute and pitiful when she brings you a ball and so badly wants to play. But we really did try to limit her running...however those few birds that land in the backyard would be chased out by Molly and Chelsea.

There were times that we did let Molly out back and she and Chelsea would start to play and run then Molly would sit down and take a break...but we never saw her limp or "complain of" pain. Her breed also does not show pain so it was hard for us to tell.

So I started doing a lot of research. I look up all I can on the internet. There are many opinions out there..some dogs do well without the surgery and just on joint medications...some dogs as long as their activity is limited do okay...there are also some other surgeries that are new and upcoming to repair the cruciate ligament and/or reshape the knee joint. Some people said their dog did great with the surgery. Just A LOT of information....kinda overwhelming too! Plus I start talking with my friends about it too. Several friends say that the joint supplements were the best thing ever and that their dog was doing great on them. Plus my friend worked at the vet school at NC State and we started asking her a bunch of questions too. I didn't know if the vet school would be an option for Molly to have surgery there....we were looking at the cost comparision as well.

Also there were people that would say "it's a dog I would not spend that much money". Okay let me address that. Before we got the "girls" I may have said the same thing. I mean our former dog Bart never needed surgery of any kind. He could only however eat certain food because of some allergy and we could have done a round of expensive tests to see what he was allergic too...but why spend the money when we knew what he could eat without any problems. Before we had Molly and Chelsea I never would have thought about spending $5000 on a dog (which is what it may be after two surgeries). But now we have these dogs...they are only 18 months old...they have A LOT of life left in them. It is not like this diagnosis is cancer and the surgery is only a pallative thing and she will eventually die from cancer. We are looking to "fix" her and she could live many more years healthy, happy and active! So Sean and I were willing to have it done (yes it is hard to stomach the cost....but we have fallen for these dogs too!)

Now looking at Molly on all 3 medications she looks great! However after the two week course of pain med and anti inflammatory Molly finished her last pill. It was about 3 days later and Molly was limping like we had never seen before. It was so sad to watch. I was ready for her back legs to break the way she was walking. So I knew she needed the surgery. She is only 18 months old and to see her walking like that broke our hearts...she could not go on like that. I quickly called the vet to get her back on her medication and to also buy some time to decide where to have the surgery...the vet school or at our vet.

Once again Molly responded and did not limp much on the pain med and anti-imflammatory. Now I knew that she could not stay on this medication forever...though I wish she could. Again my medical mind did understand the surgery and how it would help Molly.

Okay after weighing the options of vet school or our vet's office we felt more comfortable going to our vet with the surgeon coming in there...our vet would be apart of the immediate post op recovery instead of us going somewhere and bringing Molly and a report to our vet after the surgery. I liked that option. Plus financially there was not much difference...and we would have to get a referral and make an appointment with the vet school...pushing surgery back even further. We had a vacation set for July to the mountains and we were taking the dogs with us...and wanted to get the surgery(well the first knee done) and get Molly recovered so that she could go. So having the surgery at our vets office with Dr Tutor the surgeon was the way we went.

I called and talked with Dr Gallagher and she was please that we were going with the TPLO beause she felt Molly would do great with it. We discussed doing the left knee first...even though she probably hurt the right one first, she seemed to limp more on the left. She called Dr Tudor and a date of May 6th, 2010 was set.