[Dailydrool] Our experience with torn ACL - LONG

[AWoodrum]

My Gracie is a big girl, about 65 pounds, and she is about 14 years old now
we think (a rescue dog so it's a best guess).  She tore her ACL on her left
back leg about 3 years ago, when she was 11, and I want to share some of our
experiences.  Of course what happened with us is not necessarily what will
happen with your dog, but you never know what info might help.

 

First, we have never known for sure what happened, but my best guess is she
somehow twisted her leg going in or out of the pet door, at the time there
were a couple of low steps the girls used on the outside, and then a 3 or 4
inch step down on the inside.  Gracie has never been a counter surfer or
jumper, so it was nothing like that.  All of a sudden one early afternoon we
were outside and she started trembling some, and over the next 20 or 30
minutes it got a lot worse, so I put the other two girls in the house and
off to the vet we went.  They diagnosed torn ACL, and the vet suggested
putting her on pain meds while I put her on a diet to lose about 8 pounds,
he said she would have to have a specialist do surgery and put in a metal
plate and some pins, and she would do better if she lost weight.  Condensed
version here, I said I don't want to do the surgery on her, she's too old,
could we put her on pain meds permanently?  Vet said yes, he had several
other patients who were doing that and it would be fine.  So we went home
with Tramadol and instructions.

 

I won't go into all the details, but by the next morning it was very obvious
that Gracie was allergic to Tramadol, so we switched her to Deramax.  That
is, until I researched and found out that Deramax is the animal version of
Celebrex, and in dogs could have some extremely severe (as in bleeding to
death internally) side effects.  Droolers had been talking about using SOD &
Boswellia for pain, so I contacted a few people for info, and we changed her
to the SOD & Boswellia, which she still takes today, 3 years later.  Two
tablets in the morning, two in the evening, and she does great.

 

The day she injured herself she was able to put weight on her leg and walk,
but you could tell it was extremely painful.  Next day, no weight on that
leg at all and she couldn't get up or walk, so I had to do the towel under
the belly carry to get her in and out, and it nearly killed both of us, I
kept losing my balance and we would fall.  We did this for several days,
then Angelika Hastings sent me a dog sling made to fit over the back legs
that had a handle for lifting, and wow did this help.  We also built a ramp
at the front stoop for her to go up and down, and we replaced the doggie
door steps with another ramp.  Both are still there and get used by all the
dogs.  Another huge improvement.

 

Rehab took a very long time.  One thing I did right was, the second morning
when we had to change her from Tramadol, I asked the vet to give me some
tranquilizers for Gracie, which he did.  What I did was, for the first week
or so, I kept her on the tranquilizers and basically she slept most of the
time, and healed.  After about a week I weaned her off of daytime
tranquilizers, but gave them to her at night, so she could sleep.  I really
think this helped a lot, making sure she slept well at night.  I broke the
pills into quarters and as she improved gave her less and less, but she was
on the night time tranquilizers for a couple of months.

 

We are big walkers, the girls all love to walk, so this was a major problem
we had to work through.  Gracie could walk around the yard and get in and
out the pet door after about 2 weeks, and she wanted to go walk with us, but
at first she could barely get from the front door to the driveway.  We had a
red wagon with wooden sides in the garage, so I put a couple of old blankets
in the wagon to soften it up, and we took it with us.  At first Gracie would
walk to the driveway, then I'd pick her up and put her in the wagon and off
we would go.  Once or twice each walk we'd stop and I'd get her out and let
her walk a very short distance, then into the wagon again.  And each week I
would let her walk a little further, I'd watch her bad leg and when I'd
start to see it quiver a little, into the wagon.

 

This is what we did to rehab, let her walk a little further each week.  It
probably took 4 to 5 months, maybe a bit longer, before she was able to walk
an entire walk (we go between 1 and 2 miles, depending on the weather), but
she did it.  The main thing was we took our time and I did not let her
stress her leg too much before putting her in the wagon, so we never had any
setbacks.  She would want to keep walking, she wanted to keep up with the
other two girls, and I would say nope, into the wagon, you're done.  Once
she was finally able to do our normal distance, she's done it ever since.  

 

Now that she's older we have started taking the wagon again in hot weather
because she poops out, but it's the heat, not her leg.  As long as she takes
the SOD & Boswellia, she is fine.  Sorry this was so long, I hope it's
helpful to those of you coping with torn ACLs.  It takes a long time to
fully rehab.

 

Anita Woodrum

awoodrum at clear.net

 

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