Tightrope Failure Confirmed

I took Winston to AMVS this morning to get his leg checked out. We got there a little early so quite a few of the folks there got to visit with him while we waited in the lobby. One of the nice things about having a very large dog is that he can have some treats without having to worry too much about his figure. He wasn't happy about being there, but he was happy to see everyone that visited with him. He gave out a few big wet kisses, some of which included cookie crumbs -- eeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

They took x-rays and performed an exam. The x-rays look fine, in fact Dr. Duerr said that if there was a textbook picture of a successful Tightrope repair, we were looking at it in Winston's x-rays. The bone tunnels look fine and normal and the toggles are at the end of the tunnels just like they should be. It will be interesting to hear what has happened to the fiber tape.

Despite the way the x-rays looked, the exam confirmed that his left knee is unstable. Luckily his arthritis hasn't progressed too much, so I guess that was the good news in all of this. They also agreed with me that his right leg looks bigger and almost back to "normal" -- tomorrow will be 6 months from his TPLO surgery on that leg. The recommendation for his left leg is also a TPLO (as I suspected). They were willing to work with us on cost since we've been through so much with them. Have I mentioned lately that I love these guys?

Since cost was our biggest concern and that is (hopefully) going to be manageable, we're going to go ahead with the TPLO repair. It may not turn out perfectly but hopefully he'll get a chance to play and have some quality of life. I don't have any good reason to wait, so we scheduled it for tomorrow which will be one year to the day from the Tightrope repair on the same leg.

Stay tuned....