Though the diagnosis of Cruciate Ligament rupture or serious damage is devastating, hopefully this can add a little comfort for those about to go through it.

Cookie underwent her second TPLO (Tibial Plateau Levelling Osteotomy) surgery at the beginning of February. This was on her left leg after having the same surgery on her right leg back in 2019. Yesterday she was two weeks post op and she was allowed out for short five minute walks and as you can see from the video below she did really well.

Though it’s a major surgery I have been amazed at how resilient dogs can be and how despite our worries how rapid their recovery can be. After now going through this twice, whilst we are no experts we have learned a lot from the experience and these for us are the key things.

Insurance. If you’ve taken your dog to a vet with a leg problem, i.e limping be very careful about switching insurance companies. Your new company may well see that as an existing condition and refuse the claim which could leave you with a very large bill for surgery. Cookies surgery was around £3500 for instance.

Follow the Instructions. When you bring your dog home you will get a very detailed sheet of things to follow, including restriction of movement and medication. We followed this to the letter and read it regularly to make sure we were sticking to the timeline. When we spoke to Cookie’s surgeon he said most issues were when dogs were given too much freedom too early and they regularly had issues with dogs climbing on sofa’s or running off lead way too early.

A harness is invaluable. When Cookie had her first operation we bought a Help em harness which has been an amazing help. It cost us around £100 but it’s some of the best money we’ve ever spent. She had that on for two weeks to help her up and help in getting her out to the toilet.

A camera/monitor. If you can afford one we found a camera in the room where she was kept to be a real help. It meant we could give her a break from the buster collar and be sure she wasn’t getting at the wound. These type of camera are pretty cheap now and you can watch it on your phone. We found that a real help and gave us a lot of comfort overnight to see that she was settled. We used our Furbo camera but there are plenty of other makes on Amazon for example.

This is just our experience and as I said we’re not experts at all but it’s a novices view of what it’s like. Don’t get me wrong it’s really tough especially the first few days when they get home but they are so resilient they really take it in their stride.

As part of her continuing recovery we’re going to be doing some blogs on hydrotherapy and also looking at a supplement to assist with her ongoing mobility.