Tightrope repair?

I found information on a relatively new CCL repair procedure called a Tightrope. It sounds like it's hard to find surgeons who do it though, so we might have to travel somewhere to get it done.

I called AMVS to find out if they knew of this procedure. It turns out that they do it, but have never done it for a dog as large as Winston. They contacted Dr. Cook to get his recommendation for a dog Winston's size. He said that there should be no issue at all.

I heard/read somewhere (can't remember the source, so take this with a grain of salt) that the fiber tape was strong enough to tow a volkswagon beetle.

I really like the idea of NOT cutting the end of a bone off and then bolting it back on in a different position. Merely drilling some holes through the bone seems like a much better option to me. The main problem that the surgeon had was that there is no long-term data available for tightrope repairs. I'm gambling that everything will turn out ok. I'm willing to take that risk and hope for the best outcome.

We set a pre-op appointment where they took x-rays and drew blood to make sure that Winston didn't have any other health problems that might cause us to change our minds about doing surgery. Everything checked out fine.

I've ordered an exercise pen and an orthpedic bed, a sling and an inflatable e-collar from Drs Foster and Smith. They should be here within a week.

Winston's first Tightrope surgery is scheduled for December 2, 2008. His left leg is worse than his right leg, so we'll start with that one.

Once we got the sling and the e-collar, we made him wear the e-collar (aka "the donut") for a few hours at a time for several evenings. He was never happy to have it on, but he accepted that we put this weird thing on him and he started ignoring it pretty quickly. We live in a split-level house so once you come in the front door or the back door, you come into about a 10'x10' room. From there we have 7 steps to get up into the main part of the house or 7 steps to go downstairs to a family room and laundry. We figured we'd end up having to use a sling at some point to help him up and down the stairs. He has weighed as much as 210 pounds, but once he started having problems we worked on getting his weight down, and he's about 195 now. Even the back half of him is a lot to lift when he outweighs you! Anyway, we also did some practice "helping" him up and down the stairs with the sling before surgery. Again, he didn't like it much but since we weren't actually trying to pick his feet off the ground, he seemed to accept it.