Our poor little Howie tore his other rear CCL this past weekend. Nearly 2 years after he ruptured the left one. We don’t know how he did it this time, we came home from a bunch of errands Friday night and Howie wasn’t putting weight on his right rear leg. He might have been chasing squirrels (which always seems to get him into trouble)…we have squirrels here, and Howie still will run after them.
We took Howie to the animal emergency room in Pensacola on Saturday to rule out anything broken, and the vet could tell right away it was his other CCL. He’s 11 years old now, his (suspected) breed mix is predisposed to this issue, and once you repair one CCL, the chances of the other CCL failing are increased.
This morning we followed up with our own vet and she suggested using “cold laser therapy” to trigger scar tissue to grow in quickly and we can reinforce the torn ligament precisely enough so Howie can get his mobility back without surgery!
This wasn’t presented as an option in 2009, perhaps because it’s wasn’t widely available 2 years ago. Our options here are much easier, we only have to travel as far as Pensacola, instead of Manhattan, KS to do the most intensive of our repair options.
Dave and I took a few hours to learn more about the procedure, ask questions of our vet and pet insurance company and we were happy with the pricing, the procedure, and the ease (almost too good to be true!). We decided not to waste any more time and scheduled Howie to start the first of 8 treatments this afternoon. He’ll need up to 8 treatments without more than 3 days between the treatments. It’s aggressive, but since I live 5 minutes from the vet (it’s just past the boys’ school), it’s easy enough for me.
Enjoy some recent pictures of Howie. These are all from AFTER his first CCL repair. He was hiking and climbing like he was 2 years old last summer!
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