Winston has been limping off and on for about a month now. It looks to me like it's his right front leg, but it's subtle. He's been having some pain issues off and on since May. We took him to our regular vet who couldn't find anything obviously wrong in an initial exam (we're both pretty conservative, so we didn't take any x-rays at that time). He prescribed Rimadyl and we decided to watch him.
Towards the end of the month we noticed that Winston was having a hard time standing up after sitting or lying down. A guest knocked over a chair and startled him and he was unable to get up in a hurry and ended up dragging himself across the room to get out of the way. I called my vet and he referred me to Aspen Meadow Veterinary Specialists for a diagnosis of the problem. Turns out that I was way off base -- he had partial cranial cruciate ligament tears in both back legs. He was trying to carry more of his weight with his front legs which is why it looked like he was limping with a front leg.
Dr. Duerr recommended that we do TPLOs on each of his legs to correct the problem. He got out a model and the plates and described the surgery in detail, but suggested that I do my research. A surgical nurse came in after I finished with the doctor to describe what to do to prepare for the surgery, what to expect when we dropped him off and then provided an estimate for the cost. I left there pretty much reeling... it was a lot to take in and I really needed to absorb it all. In all of our years of dog ownership, we've never had any sort of major vet bill and I'd never heard of torn cruciate ligaments. How could we possibly pay for this? Since Winston wasn't even 3 and other than these injuries he was healthy and happy, how could we not pay for this?
I went home and cried.
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